By John Riley on June 2, 2022 @JohnAndresRiley
An Oklahoma bill that restricts transgender students to only using school facilities that match their gender identity is now law.
Last week, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who is on record as opposing any recognition of transgender and nonbinary identity, signed a bill enshrining the restriction into law. An emergency provision in the bill caused it to take effect with Stitt’s signature.
“Governor Stitt believe girls should use girl restrooms and boys should use boy restrooms,” Stitt’s spokesperson, Carly Atchison, said in a statement.
Under the bill, all public school restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms and shower rooms are to be designated for exclusive use by either males or females. Individuals may only use those facilities based on the gender marker listed on their original birth certificate.
The law also requires schools to offer single-occupancy bathrooms and changing rooms for those who don’t want to use the facility that matches their assigned sex at birth.
School districts and charter schools that fail to comply with the restrictions on transgender users could face a 5% deduction in their state funding — which could range anywhere from thousands to millions of dollars, depending on the size of the school system, reports The Oklahoman.
Under law, parents and legal guardians would be allowed to sue if their children’s public school fails to comply with the law.
The legislation was passed in response to a policy, adopted six years ago, by Stillwater Public Schools that allowed students to use bathrooms matching their gender identity. No incidents of misbehavior were reported for as long as the policy was in place, but recent rhetoric over transgender “ideology” and “wokeness” — driven by right-wing media and politicians — prompted outrage among parents and community members, as well as Republican politicians, who argued the policy placed cisgender girls at risk of sexual abuse or harassment.
Education Secretary Ryan Walters, now running as one of several GOP candidates for the position of state schools superintendent, has long opposed making accommodations for trans students based on their gender identity, calling it a product of the “woke agenda.”
“Biological males should not receive unrestricted access to women’s restrooms, leaving our young girls uncomfortable and afraid to enter them during school,” Walters wrote in a letter to Stillwater Public Schools.
Stitt previously signed a bill into law earlier this year barring transgender athletes from competing on sports teams matching they gender identity, and issued an executive order prohibiting the Oklahoma Department of Health from issuing birth certificates with nonbinary or gender-neutral markers.
LGBTQ advocates have warned that the law could cause transgender children to question their own safety using the bathroom at school, and may even be a violation of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in school settings. The U.S. Supreme Court has thus far declined to weigh in on the issue, allowing a ruling from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of transgender student Gavin Grimm — finding a similar bathroom ban violated his constitutional rights — to stand.
A January poll from The Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, found that 85% of transgender youths say that recent debates over bills restricting transgender rights have had a negative impact on their mental health.
Nicole McAfee, the executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, called the bathroom ban “the most dangerous policy that has advanced” this year.
“Let us be clear: not only does this policy make trans students unsafe, it creates a hostile, unsafe environment for all students,” McAfee said in a statement. “This policy requires trans students to be regularly outed at school, to possibly unsafe contacts, targeting their ability to continue using the bathroom as needed, relegating them to either separate facilities or creating scenarios where trans girls may be forced to use a bathroom with boys and trans boys forced to use a bathroom with girls.
“There is no question this bill is unconstitutional. It is absolutely a violation of Title IX. We know it could very well create Title II violations at districts across the state,” McAfee added. “Ultimately, it will cost the state hundreds of millions in business dollars, unimaginable costs in litigation and attorney fees, further brain drain as educators, school administrators, and school counselors refuse to be complicit in this harm, and very likely the lives of some of the most vulnerable children in our state whose ability to imagine a future for themselves is erased by political grandstanding that furthers misinformation, fear, and hate about who they are.”
By John Riley on May 6, 2022 @JohnAndresRiley
A federal judge has ordered an Indiana school district to allow a 13-year-old transgender student to use the boys' restroom at his middle school.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt, of the Southern District of Indiana, issued a preliminary injunction last week prohibiting the Metropolitan School District of Martinsville from barring the transgender seventh-grader, A.C., from the boys' restroom at John R. Wooden Middle School.
A.C., who has identified as a boy since he was 8 years old, has been clinically diagnosed with gender dysphoria, is currently seeing a physician to treat his condition, and has been granted permission to legally change his name.
By John Riley on April 29, 2022 @JohnAndresRiley
A Montana judge has blocked a law prohibiting transgender people from changing the gender marker on their birth certificates unless they have undergone a "surgical procedure."
Last week, District Judge Michael Moses of Billings ruled that the law is unconstitutional because it is overly vague. The bill, which was approved by lawmakers and signed into law by Gov. Greg Gianforte last year, requires people seeking to amend the gender marker on their birth certificate to undergo a "surgical procedure" but is vague about what type of surgical procedure they must obtain.
The law also requires transgender individuals to obtain a court order attesting to the fact that they've undergone surgery of some type, and submit it to the Department of Public Health and Human Services, which would then "certify" the gender transition and allow the birth certificate to be amended.
By Justin Walton on May 9, 2022
Equality advocates have sued the state of Ohio over a provision that allows any medical provider to deny services to patients -- regardless of their identity -- due to their religious beliefs or moral values.
Last year, the Republican-led Ohio legislature approved a so-called "conscience clause" exemption for medical providers and attached it to the 2021 budget, which Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law.
But due to the negative impact that such an exemption could wreak on multiple communities -- especially the LGBTQ community -- the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, along with the Baker Hostetler law firm, sued to block the state from enforcing the law.
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