NORTHWEST/NATION
TUESDAY, MAY 11, 2021
THE OBSERVER — 7A
Idaho shooting: Few school incidents committ ed by girls
By REBECCA BOONE and
LINDSAY WHITEHURST
Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho —
Authorities said they are
trying to determine what
prompted a young girl to
open fi re at a rural Idaho
middle school, one of the
few school shootings in
which the suspect is female.
The shooting happened
around 9 a.m. Thursday,
May 6, when police
reported the girl pulled a
handgun out of her back-
pack and shot two other
students and an adult cus-
todian before a teacher dis-
armed and held her until
police arrived. All three
were shot in the extremities,
and none had life-threat-
ening injuries.
Jeff erson County Sheriff
Steve Anderson said May
7 the investigation is likely
to take a “considerable
amount of time.” He said
neither the name of the sus-
pect — a sixth-grade girl —
nor the name of the teacher
who disarmed her would be
immediately released.
The shooting took place
over the course of about fi ve
minutes, Anderson said.
School shootings are
rare in Idaho, and shootings
John Roark /The Idaho Post-Register via AP
People embrace outside after a shooting at Rigby Middle School in Rigby, Idaho, on Thursday, May 6, 2021.
Authorities said they are trying to fi gure out what led a sixth-grade female student to shoot in the rural middle
school, injuring two students and a custodian, before a teacher disarmed her.
where the suspect is iden-
tifi ed as a young girl are
uncommon but not unheard
of nationwide.
Girls and women commit
just 2% of both mass shoot-
ings and school shootings in
the U.S., according to data
compiled by the group The
Violence Project.
The group maintains a
database of shootings at
schools where more than
one person was shot or
a person came to school
heavily armed with the
intention of fi ring indis-
criminately. It includes 146
cases going back to 1980.
Girls were the shooters in
just three of those cases.
Experts diff er on exactly
why, though it’s known
that men commit over 90%
homicides in general.
Researchers have also
found shooters who target
bigger groups or schools
tend to study past perpetra-
tors, who are more likely to
be male.
“They see themselves
in some of these other
shooters,” said Violence
Project President Jillian
Peterson, a forensic psy-
chologist and professor
at Hamline University in
Minnesota.
Boys in general tend to
externalize anger and sad-
ness against other people,
whereas girls are more
likely to internalize those
emotions and have higher
rates of depression and anx-
iety, Peterson said.
The Idaho girl is also
younger than most school
shooters, who are more
often in high school.
The Violence Project’s
database shows about 18%
of school shootings were
at middle schools, though
most of those were among
older teenagers. Only a
handful involved sixth-
grade students, Peterson
said.
Two recent studies by
the U.S. Secret Service’s
National Threat Assess-
ment Center off er insight
into common character-
istics between many kids
who plan or carry out
school shootings. The stu-
dents were often badly bul-
lied, suff ered from depres-
sion with stress at home
and exhibited behavior that
worried others. They were
often absent from school
before the attack.
Most attackers who
carried out deadly school
shootings were male; seven
were female, according to
the studies. Researchers
said 63% of the attackers
were white, 15% were
Black, 5% Hispanic, 2%
were American Indian or
Alaska Native, 10% were of
two or more races, and 5%
were undetermined.
School shootings have
become increasingly
common in the U.S. over
the past two decades, but
they remain relatively rare
in Idaho. In 1999, a stu-
dent at a high school in the
community of Notus, west
of Boise, fi red a shotgun
several times. No one was
struck by the gunfi re, but
one student was injured by
ricocheting debris from the
fi rst shell.
In 1989, a student at
Rigby Junior High pulled
a gun, threatened a teacher
and students, and took a
14-year-old girl hostage.
Police safely rescued the
hostage from a nearby
church about an hour later
and took the teen into cus-
tody. No one was shot in
that incident.
In 2016, Idaho law-
makers passed a bill that
allowed most people to
carry concealed weapons
without a permit. But that
right doesn’t extend to
schools, courthouses or
correctional facilities.
Reversing Trump, U.S. restores health protections for transgendered people
By RICARDO ALONSO-
ZALDIVAR
Associated Press
WASHINGTON —
The U.S. will protect gay
and transgender people
against sex discrimination
in health care, the Biden
administration announced
Monday, May 10, reversing
a Trump-era policy that
sought to narrow the scope
of legal rights in sensitive
situations involving med-
ical care.
The action by the
Department of Health and
Human Services affi rms
that federal laws forbid-
ding sex discrimination
in health care also pro-
tect gay and transgender
people. The Trump admin-
istration had defi ned “sex”
to mean gender assigned
at birth, thereby excluding
transgender people from
the law’s umbrella of
protection.
“Fear of discrimina-
tion can lead individuals to
forgo care, which can have
serious negative health
consequences,” said HHS
Secretary Xavier Becerra.
“Everyone — including
LGBTQ people — should
be able to access health
care, free from discrim-
ination or interference,
period.”
It marked the latest step
by President Joe Biden to
advance the rights of gay
and transgender people
across society, from mili-
tary service, to housing, to
employment opportunities.
Becerra said in a state-
ment the policy shift will
bring HHS into line with
a landmark 6-3 Supreme
Court decision last year in
a workplace discrimination
case, which established
that federal laws against
sex discrimination on the
job also protect gay and
transgender people.
Despite that ruling, the
Trump administration pro-
ceeded to try to narrow the
legal protections against
health care discrimina-
tion, issuing rules that nar-
rowly defi ned “sex” as bio-
logical gender. A federal
judge had blocked those
rules from taking eff ect,
although Trump admin-
istration offi cials argued
that as a legal matter
health care discrimination
was a separate issue from
the employment case the
Supreme Court decided.
Monday’s action means
the HHS Offi ce for Civil
Rights will again investi-
gate complaints of sex dis-
crimination on the basis
of sexual orientation and
gender identity. Hospitals,
clinics and other medical
providers can face govern-
ment sanctions for viola-
tions of the law.
The Biden adminis-
tration action essentially
restores the policy estab-
lished during the Obama
years. The Aff ordable
Care Act included a pro-
hibition on sex discrim-
ination in health care
but did not include the
term “gender identity.”
The Obama administra-
tion interpreted the law as
shielding gay and trans-
gender people as well. It
relied on a broad under-
standing of sex shaped by
a person’s inner sense of
being male, female, neither
or a combination.
Behind the dispute
over rights for transgender
people in particular is a
medically recognized con-
dition called “gender dys-
phoria” — discomfort or
distress caused by a dis-
crepancy between the
gender that a person iden-
tifi es as and the gender
assigned at birth. Conse-
quences can include severe
depression. Treatment can
range from gender confi r-
mation surgery and hor-
mones to people changing
their outward appearance
by adopting a diff erent
hairstyle or clothing.
Under the Obama-era
rule, a hospital could be
required to perform gen-
der-transition procedures
such as hysterectomies if
the facility provided that
kind of treatment for other
medical conditions.
LGBTQ groups say
explicit protections are
needed for people seeking
gender transition treat-
ment, and even for trans-
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gender people who need
care for illnesses such as
diabetes or heart problems.
More than 1.5 mil-
lion Americans identify
as transgender, according
to the Williams Institute,
a think tank focusing on
LGBT policy at the UCLA
School of Law. A bigger
number — 4.5% of the
population— identify as
lesbian, gay, bisexual or
transgender, according to
Gallup.
Professional groups
like the American Medical
Association, along with
civil rights organizations,
have supported health care
protections for gay and
transgender people, while
social and religious conser-
vatives sought to narrow
their scope.
HHS is a traditional bat-
tleground for confl icts over
social issues. During the
Trump administration the
department clearly bent
to the will of conserva-
tives. Other Trump poli-
cies applauded by the right
restricted abortion referrals
and broadened employers’
ability to opt out of pro-
viding birth control to
women workers covered by
their health plans. Under
Biden, the policy pendulum
has been swinging back
in the opposite direction,
as offi cials unwind actions
taken in the Trump years.
One of Biden’s fi rst
steps after taking offi ce
was a Jan. 20 executive
order on combating dis-
crimination on the basis
of gender identity or
sexual orientation. The
new president directed
every executive branch
agency to examine what it
could do to combat such
discrimination.
Biden quickly followed
that up with another order
reversing a Trump-era Pen-
tagon policy that largely
barred transgender indi-
viduals from serving in the
military.
And earlier this spring,
the Department of Housing
and Urban Development
withdrew a Trump policy
that would have allowed
taxpayer-funded homeless
shelters to deny access to
transgender people.
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