Advocate applauds landmark ruling for LGBTQ students made by Privacy Commissioner

Advocates and members of the LGBTQ community are calling it a landmark ruling and one that’s been years in the making.

The Privacy Commissioner of Alberta has found an Edmonton School violated a transgendered student’s rights by using her birth name and revealing as a result her gender during the attendance roll call.

School Board officials agreed in the complaint that they had not made proper security arrangements to protect her personal information.

In the seven page ruling, it’s revealed the student and her parents met with school officials and advised them she was transgender.

Officials were told they could tell her teachers but she didn’t want the student body to become aware and preferred to keep the information private.

Accommodations were made that teachers would read roll call from a paper list which reflected the students chosen name instead of an electronic computer program called “PowerTeacher.”

The student’s name in “PowerTeacher” is her birth name and not her chosen name.

“On a number of occasions, the complainant’s legal name was displayed on a screen at the front of her classroom and was visible to the entire class. On two of these occasions, a teacher also called out or had another student call out attendance from the screen, announcing the complainant’s legal name to the other students in the class. On one occasion a supply teacher loudly discussed with the Complainant the process to have her name changed,” read the report.

Most of the incidents involved substitute teachers who were covering for her regular instructors.

The issue was brought up with school officials who did apologize; a complaint was still filed to the Privacy Commissioner.

A ruling was then issued after both sides were unable to come to an agreement during mediation.

They’ve been ordered to review their current policies and make changes to the system.

“This is a landmark ruling that clearly supports the confidentiality and privacy of transgender students in Alberta schools. I think this ruling also vindicates Minister Eggen’s recent LGBTQ guidelines and best practices that speak to the importance of confidentiality of a student’s sexual orientation, gender identity in schools and it’s going to require school boards revisit the policies they submitted to the Minister, which are still under review, so they’re detailed and specific when it comes to meeting the now legal privacy expectations of transgender students in our K-12 school system,” said Dr. Kristopher Wells, Faculty Director at the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services at the University of Alberta.

Wells says students are going to have to do a comprehensive review of their policies and record keeping.

It’ll also force school boards to look at student sports teams, locker rooms and policies because a student’s gender identity can’t be shared without their expressed consent.

“This ruling requires school districts to be proactive rather than reactive and take a close and detailed look in all the different ways where a student’s privacy and confidentiality are important in our schools and this is particularly important to our transgender students because if their privacy is breached it can place them at great harm.”

He says once a student is outted there is no going back.

“This has very serious implications of vulnerable students in our schools, the Privacy Commissioner got it right.”

“Privacy is a very, very important issue particularly when it comes to vulnerable young people.”