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Yale touts gender-neutral bathrooms

Yale University is promoting new gender-neutral bathrooms on its website ahead of its commencement on Monday. 

The Ivy League university installed gender-neutral bathrooms in 23 buildings this school year, and has a map showing where they can be found. Signs on the bathrooms read “All Gender Restroom” but still use the standard sign depicting silhouettes of both a man and a woman.

{mosads}For the first time, the school will also allow transgender students graduating this week to have the name they use on their diplomas, rather than the name given to them at birth, according to the Associated Press. 

“Yale aims to be a leader on this front,” Tamar Gendler, dean of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, told AP. “Part of what is important about the all-gender bathroom project and about putting it at the top of our commencement site, is this is about public signaling.” 

Yale’s professors are also addressing students with their preferred names and pronouns, the report said.

Students can also use preferred names on school identification cards and on the school’s web portal.

The Obama Administration has filed a lawsuit against North Carolina over the state’s controversial transgender bathroom law. The law requires that people in the state use bathrooms that correspond to their biological sex. 

The lawsuit by the Department of Justice says the state violates the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Title IX the Education Acts Amendment of 1972 and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act.

– Updated at 12:55 p.m.