- A dispute over gender and bathrooms is complicating efforts to renew a millage for Monroe County Community College
- GOP officials won’t support the millage unless the district agrees to allow only single-stall bathrooms to be gender-inclusive
- The college district says it’s complying with an anti-discrimination law
Gender-inclusive bathrooms are threatening a second attempt to renew a millage for Monroe County’s only higher education institution.
Monroe County Community College is asking voters in November to renew a millage to fund facility and technology projects on the 60-year-old campus. The 0.85-mill tax would continue to cost owners of homes worth $250,000 about $100 per year.
Voters rejected the college’s renewal request last November after approving it in 2016 and 2020. College officials say the Monroe County Republican Party campaigned against the tax because of controversy surrounding gender-inclusive bathrooms on campus.
“They claimed we were being ‘overly woke’ on our campus, whatever that means,” said Kojo Quartey, president of the college with about 2,500 students.
The campus bathrooms have been an issue with local Republicans since lawmakers expanded the Michigan Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act in 2024 to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. In response, the college placed signs outside dozens of multi-stall bathrooms welcoming students to use them based on their gender identity.
Those signs have since been taken down. “Some, in the LGBQ community, felt the placards put a sign on their back,” Quartey explained. But Republicans recently wrote a letter to the district’s president and board that said the party would support the millage if multi-stall bathrooms are restricted according to biological sex and transgender and nonbinary students are made aware that single-stall bathrooms on campus are available for use. The letter outlined three other conditions, including a curriculum free of political bias.
“Before we can consider offering our support for the College’s upcoming millage proposal … We ask MCCC to provide clarity and consistency on bathroom and locker room policy that prioritize both privacy and compliance with state and federal law,” said the June 23 letter, obtained by Bridge Michigan.
Quartey said that would violate state law.
The issue has been unfolding at the college for more than a year. Observers say the turmoil is perhaps unlike anywhere else in the state.
“Historically America has had problems with banning certain communities of people from using certain restrooms and it didn’t go well,” said Spencer Lyke, a recent MCCC graduate who has participated in the debate since it began in early 2024. “America has a bad history with segregation, and this is going right into that again.”
Voters’ rejection of the millage renewal in November reflected concerns of the community, local Republicans said, and they are only trying to get the college to respond and reflect the broader community’s values.
“We want the college to be healthy, we want the college to thrive,” said Todd Gillman, chair of the Monroe County Republican Party. “But we also want the community college to represent the people of the district, the ones that pay their bills …and not represent a small faction of activists, and that is what they appear to be doing. They are kowtowing to activists inside their own institution.”
Last week, Monroe County Community College trustees voted to put the mileage renewal before the voters again in November.
The college needs approval of the millage renewal before it expires this year or it will have to bring another millage request before voters, said Aaron Mason, a Republican who is chair of the MCCC board of trustees. The college also needs to comply with state law, and he hopes the “voters, not party bosses” decide the upcoming millage renewal request.
Placards, posters and harassment
The issue of who gets to use which restrooms has been a political flashpoint in statehouses and schools for more than a decade.
Monroe County is home to about 155,000 residents and has trended towards Republicans since 2016. President Donald Trump carried the county each of the last three presidential elections, building on his totals each time.
If voters approve the millage renewal in November, it would raise $36 million over five years. The millage funds, about 14% of the college’s $43.7 million in revenue, will be used for projects on MCCC’s main campus in Monroe and the Whitman Center in Temperance.
The bathrooms at MCCC became an issue last year after college officials put up placards next to each of the three dozen multi-stall campus bathrooms indicating that individuals could use the restrooms based on their gender identity, Quartey said.
But MCCC’s Gender & Sexuality Alliance hung posters with similar messages long before that, said Lyke, a Monroe resident.
Lyke attended a college board meeting in January 2024 after attempting to use a single-stall restroom with a broken lock then facing harassment in both men and women’s multi-stall restrooms on campus. They told trustees about the ordeal.
“It was especially concerning because I am intersex, meaning that I was born biologically not male or female,” said Lyke, 22. “So getting kicked out of those restrooms is a big issue for me because I needed somewhere to safely use the restroom. Having a gender-neutral stall wasn’t an answer in that case because it’s a single-user stall and things like broken locks happen. It meant that I was harassed that day.”
Lyke, who also graduated from Siena Heights University, became a voice for LGBTQ+ students at MCCC after their ordeal and has attended board meetings where tensions have escalated, mostly by parents and people from outside the college. They said some LGBTQ+ students have been harassed and threatened in public and on social media because of the bathroom issue.
“Everything has been blown out of proportion,” said Lyke. “It’s just state law.”
Those who balked misinterpreted the intentions of the college, the president said.
“They felt that by putting those placards up, we were essentially saying that men could use the women’s restrooms,” Quartey said. “Our placard simply affirmed the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.”
Ahead of the November 2024 election, large political signs were erected around Monroe that said: “MCCC allows MEN in girls bathrooms.” Earlier this week, one was still hanging in the window of the Monroe County Republican Party office.
Most Michigan community colleges did not put up signs outside of their bathrooms like Monroe college did last year, said Holli Vallade, vice chair of the Monroe County Republican Party.
“The community college decided to go above and beyond what was required of Elliott-Larsen (Civil Rights Act) by posting permanent signage outside of every bathroom and locker room that said: ‘You are welcome to use whatever aligns with your gender identity,’” Vallade said.
Republicans say they have been meeting with college leaders to share ongoing community concerns about the bathrooms, such as the many high school students in dual enrollment and early college programs who take classes on campus.
College officials have had numerous meetings with local Republicans in search of a compromise, Quartey said. Since the tensions began, the college has put up privacy strips on the stalls of bathrooms where there are several stalls and built an additional single-use restroom at a cost of $250,000, Quartey said. And more single-use restrooms will be built with the millage funds, he added.
In June, the Monroe County Republican Party wrote a letter to Quartey and college trustees, and raised four issues of concern. Among them was that the college needs to “provide clarity and consistency” on bathroom and locker room policies to get the party’s support for the college’s millage.
Specifically, it asked that the college’s multi-stall bathrooms and locker rooms are “used in accordance with biological sex” and single-stall bathrooms “are available and accessible for transgender or nonbinary individuals as a legally appropriate accommodation.”
The letter cited the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act and also an executive order signed by Trump that requires intimate spaces in federally funded institutions be designated by sex not identity.
The letter, signed by several local Republican party leaders, also requested that the college, “post a formal policy that reflects this balance, respecting all students’ privacy and safety.”
Bill LaVoy, a former Democratic member of the Michigan House of Representatives, said he has been watching the issue unfold in Monroe and has never seen a letter that outlines the withholding of political backing unless demands are met.
“You have a group that is trying to figure out how much power they have,” said LaVoy.
Lyke, who will be working on their master’s degree in social work at Eastern Michigan University this fall, sees it differently.
“These people don’t understand the LGBQ+ community; they don’t know what it means to be gender-nonconforming or trans,” Lyke said. “They are scared of it.”
‘Oasis of hope’
Even though the signs outside the bathrooms at the college have been brought down, it is still an issue in Monroe and other places because of the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, said Vallade.
“Because of that poorly written bill, there are institutions that are still allowing biological boys to go into biological girls’ spaces,” said Vallade.
She, along with other Republicans, said the new provision of the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act is being misinterpreted, and might need to be tested in a court.
“My understanding of the law is you can’t discriminate against someone for their gender identity, which includes using the bathrooms,” said state Rep. Jamie Thompson, R-Brownstown Township. “But it doesn’t say that all bathrooms have to be open to whatever gender someone believes that they are … I think it’s going to come down to a judge hearing a case on how that law is interpreted.”
The college has asked local Republicans to bring a legal opinion that contradicts the new state law but they have produced nothing, Quartey said.
For now, the college is marshaling supporters in the community and expects that they will help pass the millage renewal.
“The college is an oasis of hope for our community,” Quartey said. “Many people still won’t accept the law. If they want to change it, they need to go to Lansing and change it. Not here.”
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