New Hampshire students protest urinal ban in gender debate

Dozens of students walked out of their New Hampshire school after the district banned urinals in a compromise to a proposal that would have blocked children from using facilities based on their gender identity. The school board decided a few days before the Friday walkout to prohibit students at Milford Middle School and Milford High School from using urinals or shared spaces in locker rooms. The ban in a town of about 15,000 people roughly 35 miles (56 kilometers) from Concord, New Hampshire’s capital, was the culmination of a long debate about district rules about bathroom use and gender identity. District procedures say students can access the bathroom that “corresponds to their gender identity consistently asserted at school.”That procedure still applies. But a proposal that came before the school board called for no longer allowing students to use school bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity.