Nineteen states now have a law or policy banning transgender people from using bathrooms that match their gender identity.
About one in four transgender people live in states with some form of bathroom restrictions, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit research group that tracks LGBTQ+-related legislation.
South Carolina renewed its K-12 bathroom law this year as part of the state budget. The mandate — initially inserted into the budget last year during the Senate’s floor debate — applies to multi-stalled school restrooms and places where students undress, to include locker rooms and gym showers.
Such directives attached to South Carolina’s state spending package — called provisos — are officially one-year laws. But they roll over from one year to the next indefinitely, unless legislators vote to take them out. There was no debate at all this year on the bathroom rule, which has now carried over into the latest fiscal year.
A lawsuit challenging it was filed in federal court last November on behalf of a transgender middle school student in Berkeley County. Attorneys for the national nonprofit Public Justice have asked for the law to be suspended pending the case’s outcome, but nothing has been decided.
So far this year, at least eight states have passed new transgender bathroom laws or expanded existing ones.
In March, Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed a pair of Republican-sponsored bills restricting the use of bathrooms and locker rooms in public buildings.
The House bill requires public school students and anyone in a government building to use the bathroom or locker room corresponding with their sex assigned at birth, regardless of their gender identity, appearance or the gender on their legal documents. The Senate’s bill, which requires public school students to use facilities that align with their sex at birth, was introduced after a local school board called on lawmakers to restrict bathroom use.
Wyoming Republican Rep. Martha Lawley, who sponsored the House bill along with another one restricting transgender girls’ participation in sports, called them “commonsense measures.”
“As the first state to grant women the right to vote, we showed the nation that Wyoming leads when it comes to equal opportunity,” Lawley wrote in an op-ed she published online ahead of the legislative session. “Now, we can lead again, ensuring our daughters and granddaughters can pursue their dreams with the same sense of fairness and security.”
Earlier in the session, a local Wyoming basketball coach who is a transgender woman spoke against the bill because she said it would require her to share a restroom with teenage boys, WyoFile reported.
Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and West Virginia have also passed or expanded similar bathroom laws this year.
In Arizona, the legislature passed a bill in May that would have restricted school bathrooms and changing rooms, but Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed it, along with two other GOP-backed bills targeting transgender people.
SC Daily Gazette Editor Seanna Adcox contributed to this report, which is made available through Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. It appears courtesy of the South Carolina Daily Gazette.