LEXINGTON, Ky. _ A lawmaker who is a Menifee County pastor has pre-filed for the 2020 Kentucky General Assembly a bill that would put limitations on which public school bathroom transgender students could use.
The legislation would also allow lawsuits against school officials who did not carry out the prohibition.
State Rep. David Hale, R-Wellington, has pre-filed The Kentucky School Privacy Act, bringing back legislation that has been sporadically filed since 2015 _ always without success _ by Hale or another lawmaker. On Tuesday, Hale said the bill had been co-sponsored by several lawmakers in the past and several had asked to co-sponsor the legislation in the 2020 General Assembly.
The legislation sponsored by Hale requires students born male to use only those facilities designated to be used by males and students born female to use only those facilities designated to be used by females.
He said he is sponsoring the legislation again because "there has been some concerns from parents" about which bathroom transgender students are using in public schools.
"It's an obvious political ploy that plays to the lowest common denominator of his base," Chris Hartman, director of the Kentucky Fairness Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, said of the legislation Hale pre-filed Dec. 5.
"It's discriminatory, it's dangerous and frankly, it can be deadly for trans students who already feel so vulnerable and marginalized, to put an additional target on their backs like this. It's grossly negligent of everyone's safety," said Hartman.
Hale said in response, "I respect his opinion to make that statement."
"It's honestly not my intent to discriminate against a specific group of people ... to me it's first a moral issue ... putting that aside, I think it's just a common sense issue that the majority of people I talk to feels like this is something that we just need to address just to make sure that it is not occurring," Hale said.
The legislation also said that while accessing a restroom, locker room, or shower room designated for use by a student's biological sex, a student encountering a person of the opposite biological sex can file a lawsuit against the school if school personnel gave the person encountered permission to use facilities or failed to take reasonable steps to prohibit the person encountered from using the facilities.
"Allowing students to use restrooms, locker rooms, or showers that are reserved for students of a different biological sex ... will create a significant potential for disruption of school activities and unsafe conditions; and create potential embarrassment, shame, and psychological injury to students," Hale's bill said.
Under the bill, a student who asserts to school officials that their gender is different from their biological sex and whose parent or legal guardian provides written consent to school officials, must be provided with the "best available" accommodation, but they still could not enter a prohibited bathroom.
Among the acceptable accommodations noted in the bill were single-stall restrooms, access to unisex bathrooms, or controlled use of faculty bathrooms, locker rooms, or shower rooms.
"Thus far," Hartman said, the legislation has "always failed miserably. I expect it to do so again,"
Josh Shoulta, Communications Director for the Kentucky School Boards Association, said his organization recommends that school districts address, on a case by case basis, the issue of which bathroom transgender students use.
Hartman said each Kentucky school handles the issue in a way that is most appropriate for their individual school in their individual community. "I can't imagine why David Hale would want to take away that local authority," Hartman said.
The National Conference of State Legislatures said in an October post on its website that North Carolina remained the only state to pass and then to repeal legislation restricting access to restrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-segregated facilities on the basis of a definition of gender consistent with the sex assigned at birth.
