ACLU Leader Resigns after Daughters' Experience in Public Bathroom
A former state executive director of the ACLU has resigned because her own daughters were frightened when transgendered men entered the women's bathroom.
The American Civil Liberties Union has been a champion of transgender bathroom rights. Former director of the Georgia ACLU chapter Maya Dillard Smith says she is resigned after her daughers' experience in a public bathroom.
"I have shared my personal experience of having taken my elementary school age daughters into a women's restroom when shortly after three transgender young adults, over six-feet tall with deep voices, entered," Smith wrote in a statement.
"My children were visibly frightened, concerned about their safety and left asking lots of questions for which I, like many parents, was ill-prepared to answer," she continued.
She also said the incident highlighted the ALCU's "hierarchy of rights."
She wrote in a statement that the ACLU is "a special interest organization that promotes not all, but certain progressive rights....based on who is funding the organization's lobbying activities."
Smith expressed the same criticism that the ACLU fights for the rights of transgender persons to use the bathroom of their choice, but has little to say about women's safety in public restrooms.
"I understood it to be the ACLU's goal to delicately balance competing rights to ensure that any infringements are narrowly tailored, that they do not create a hierarchy of rights, and that we are mindful of unintended consequences," she said.
"I believe there are solutions that can provide accommodations for transgender people and balance the need to ensure women and girls are safe from those who might have malicious intent," she concluded.
