Since the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched an investigation last week over various anti-trans and anti-Latinx bullying at Norview High School in Virginia, activists are concerned over the wellbeing of young students who are both trans and Latinx.

Earlier this year, local Norfolk, Va. radio broadcast station WHRO reported that Latino students at the high school were being assaulted because of their race, in which their families told WHRO that school officials failed to be proactive in preventing the attacks.

In one case from February of last year, Norview freshman Martin Martinez-Bautista was beaten up by 15 middle schoolers, leaving him bleeding from ear to ear. Additionally, a Norfolk student’s mother Melissa Corrigan pulled her trans son Matt out of the Virginia public school following severe harassment last year, including an assault in the bathroom and even a physical altercation during class.

The DOJ’s investigation comes after Corrigan shared with WHRO that Matt had reported his harassment to the school, but to no avail. Before Matt left the institution, Corrigan emailed the DOJ in spring of last year with no sign of momentum after a singular phone call with an agent.

Ultimately, the DOJ found sufficient evidence that Norview High School’s non-compliance warrants an investigation.

The targeting of two separate demographics at Norview has LGBTQ Latinx advocates wondering: how can schools better serve trans Latinx students?

Double jeopardy: Trans Latinx youth face dual discrimination

Racism and transphobia negatively impact young Latinx trans students, according to Bianey Garcia, a trans Mexican immigrant and former sex worker currently working as a community organizer for Make the Road NY, a major grassroots immigrant-led organization in New York.

“If a trans Latinx person doesn’t finish school or education, that person can end up doing sex work,” said Garcia, recounting her own experiences of being bullied for not only being trans, but also a person of color who didn’t speak fluent English.

Around 41.8% of young trans women in sex work reported in 2021 a lifetime of sex work, with motivations including “better pay” and “can’t get a job due to gender discrimination,” according to a National Library of Medicine article.

For Garcia, the lack of schools intervening anti-trans and anti-Latinx bullying can push people out of their educational paths and into survival sex work simply because their school environment didn’t value their safety. In 2019, executive director of Prostitution Research & Education, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization, Melissa Farley told Elm Magazine that nearly 90% of sex workers of all genders were unable to find sustainable jobs despite wanting to leave sex work.

“Besides that, sometimes there is the discrimination that they face in their homes, where being trans is so hard that they are also pushed out of the house,” she added. As an organizer at Make the Road NY, Garcia has worked with many young trans Latinx women who’ve had a history of getting kicked out of the house, ranging from 12-years-olds to 18-year-olds.

Mental health crisis for Latinx queer and trans youth

At school and otherwise, the mental health of queer, trans, and nonbinary Latinx students is a grave concern.

In a 2023 national report using a sample of nearly 7,000 Latinx queer and trans youth ages 13 to 24, The Trevor Project found that mental health challenges faced by the participants were severe. For example, 44% of Latinx LGBTQ young people seriously considered suicide in the past year, in which more than half of that subset were trans or nonbinary.

Overall, 16% of the participants reported having attempted suicide in the past year, with one in every five attempts done by a trans or nonbinary person. Even looking deeper into the subset of transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming pool of the survey at large, two thirds recall instances of discrimination solely based on their gender identity in the past year.

This state of struggle is the exact reason why Sasha Ritzie-Hernandez, an Afro-Indígena queer and nonbinary coordinator of the Bay Area Coalition for Education Justice (BACEJ), decided to become the executive director of Somos Familia, an organization with a mission to support Latinx LGBTQ families, in the first place.

Ritzie-Hernandez recalls a moment when they were running for school board in Oakland, Calif., visiting classrooms of students who had just left their native countries and weren’t fluent in English. They left a flier with their information, and the following day received a call from one of the students who voiced concern over not being able to use the restroom that aligned with their gender identity.

The tension lied in the fact that they were willing to endure the discrimination at school as it meant not causing problems that would escalate and lead to being outed as trans to their family. Since then, it has been Ritzie-Hernandez’s guiding light to show up for the voiceless—a group of people they and their team are more than familiar with.

“At Somos Familia, we ourselves are the people who navigated similar terrible conditions in school settings,” they said. “We are immigrants. We are people who have been discriminated against at work and people who have had very terrible working conditions as a result of our identity.”

They say parental involvement—albeit tricky when kids aren’t out—can be a game changer for the wellbeing of trans Latinx students. Because expressing the journey and nuances of gender identity can get lost in translation with Spanish-speaking parents and elders, some Latinx organizations like Somos Familia are dedicated to working with families to bridge that gap. The case is also true for immigrant students.

“We’re very intentional about language because we know that’s a huge barrier in the school system,” they explained. “Coming to school as undocumented and not knowing how to ask for support in those instances is a big deal.”

Additionally, it doesn’t help that school environments can be especially brutal for many trans Latinx students.

A 2020 Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network study released during the early part of the COVID- 19 pandemic also showed that Latinx students endured rampant anti-immigrant rhetoric. The study found that the added isolation and torment of being queer, trans or nonbinary added to their already-harsh experience.

But because schools have reverted to in-person schools since the pandemic, Ritzie-Hernandez wants to see even more recent reports that convey what students today need, given their return to “back to normal” schoolings.

Schools are in dire need of better cultural competency

Yes, it is on the schools to mitigate instances of violence and harassment, but what measures can institutions take to prevent these from happening in the first place?

Both Garcia and Ritzie-Hernandez note that a racially inclusive, LGBTQ curriculum is important, and perhaps even more so as such curriculum hangs in the balance in conservative states.

“It is so inhumane to implement “Don’t Say Gay” or “Don’t Say Trans” policies in school,” Garcia added, reflecting on her own wishes for when she was a student. “I really wished my school talked about transitions or gender expressions, because at that time I didn’t know anything. I was confused.”

Despite the failures of Norview High School to implement change following the multiple anti-trans and anti-Latinx harassment incidents, Garcia wants to reassure young trans Latinx students who are being bullied to not be discouraged and to continue to speak up. For her, making it through school is a priceless achievement above the tribulations along the way.

“If you can survive school, you can survive anything after that.”