Coy Mathis, 6 years old, born a male triplet, has been raised by her Colorado parents as a girl after expressing a female gender preference at a young age. Since starting at Eagle Elementary School in Fountain, CO, Coy has presented herself as female and wears conventionally female clothing. Her teachers and fellow students refer to her by female pronouns and she has been using the girls’ bathrooms.

But since this past December, the school has forced her to stop using the girls’ bathrooms and to instead use the boys’ or nurse’s bathrooms. Coy and her parents disapprove of this decision and have temporarily taken her out of the school for homeschooling and have filed a civil rights complaint with the help of the Transgender Legal and Defense Education Fund.

As Coy reasons in the video, she’s not sick, so she shouldn’t be using the nurse’s bathroom. Coy’s mother, Kathryn, had this to say: “We want Coy to return to school to be with her teachers, her friends, and her siblings, but we are afraid to send her back until we know that the school is going to treat her fairly. She is still just 6-years-old, and we do not want one of our daughter’s earliest experiences to be our community telling her she’s not good enough.”

This case makes it clear that the struggles of transgender people can begin at a young age and there is education and progress needed to insure that transgender people are treated with respect and equal rights.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvZyG1L3TyY&w=584&h=390%5D