South Dakota bill on transgender students’ bathroom access draws ire

Instead, trans students uncomfortable using the wrong restroom could request permission from their school district to use a separate facility, such as a single-stall restroom or a staff bathroom with “controlled access”.

As I wrote last week, the bill would require students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their biological sex, defined as “the physical condition of being male or female as determined by a person’s chromosomes and anatomy as identified at birth”, even if that sex doesn’t match the gender they identify with.

The bill has support from the Heritage Foundation, the Washington-based conservative research group, and the Roman Catholic bishops of South Dakota. They added that the bill would respect “the innate dignity of all persons in our schools”.

The implication that transgender people have nefarious motives for using the restroom has been soundly, repeatedly debunked by experts and law enforcement officials, who note that there has never been a single verified report of a transgender person assaulting a cisgender (nontrans) person or student in a restroom. South Dakota lawmakers passed House Bill 1008 last week.

In neighboring Iowa, a bill that advanced recently would extend hate crime protections to transgender people.

“For a very long time, many people accepted that they just had a right to discriminate against transgender people”, Warbelow said.

Lewis said that Daugaard had been “listening and asking us questions”, though he said the governor had not indicated what he would do with the bill.

Leonard said Tuesday that despite the show of support at the Capitol, he wasn’t very hopeful the governor would veto the bill.

But after Tuesday’s discussion, the governor said the meeting helped him “see things through their eyes a little better and see more of their perspective”, according to the newspaper.

Lyon says the bill has good oversight, effeciencies and accountabilities. “I think he understood that”.

“I’m one of the lucky ones”, Lewis said.

The measure calls for 63% of the increase to go to teacher pay increases, 3% to technical school instructors and 34% to property tax relief. “I want to use the bathroom where I feel I belong”.

“I’m here to talk to the governor and tell him, you know, at the end of the day, we’re all human, and we all want to use the bathroom where we want to use the bathroom”, Thomas Lewis, a transgender student in South Dakota, told KSFY.

“The reality of this situation is that bathrooms don¹t need to change”, Lewis says.