As Transgender Rights Spread at the Federal Level, So Too Do State Level Efforts to Block Them

The Obama Administration has taken consistent and progressive steps to protect the rights of LGBTQ youth, including policy guidance and most recently filing a brief in favor of Gavin Grimm in his Fourth Circuit appeal seeking equal access to facilities at his school.  But as these progressive steps occur at the federal level, some states are attempting to move backward.  Earlier this month, I posted on a Tennessee School District that would rather eliminate all extracurricular activities than allow the Gay-Straight Alliance to form in its schools.  Now that way of thinking as edged up the road to the state house.  This time, however, the policy is even more pernicious and not just about extra-curricular activities, and not just about elementary and secondary schools.  Tennessee is considering legislation that permanently exclude transgender students from bathrooms and locker rooms at its public schools and its colleges and universities. The legislation would require students to use facilities that match the sex “indicated on the student’s original birth certificate.” The full text provides:

SECTION 1. Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 49, Chapter 2, Part 1, is amended by adding the following language as a new section: Public schools shall require that a student use student restroom and locker room facilities that are assigned for use by persons of the same sex as the sex indicated on the student’s original birth certificate.

SECTION 2. Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 49, Chapter 7, Part 1, is amended by adding the following language as a new section: Public institutions of higher education shall require that a student use the restroom and locker room facilities that are assigned for use by persons of the same sex as the sex indicated on the student’s original birth certificate.

SECTION 3. This act shall take effect upon becoming a law, the public welfare requiring it.

As Tennessee law currently stands, this new legislation would lock-in exclusion for transgender students because another state law prohibits the state from recognizing sex changes on birth certificates.  As many recall, South Dakota passed similar legislation recently, but the governor there vetoed it.