Latest news with #Women'sSafetyandProtectionAct
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Tennessee House passes bill to segregate university, prison bathrooms by biological sex
A bill to require restrooms and showers in detention facilities, public college dormitories, and domestic violence centers be segregated by biological sex will soon be headed to Gov. Bill Lee's desk. SB 468/HB 571, sponsored by Sen. Janice Bowling, R-Tullahoma, and Rep. Gino Bulso, R-Brentwood, has passed both the Senate and House of Representatives, and needs a final procedural vote before going to Lee's desk to be signed. 'This bill is part of our continuing effort to protect the privacy and security of girls and women in private spaces,' Bulso said on Tuesday. Bowling and Bulso presented the bill as an effort to improve public safety, seeking to eliminate issues "with biological males accessing private areas which should only be accessed by girls and women.' No specific examples of existing issues were offered during debate on the bill. Dubbed the 'Women's Safety and Protection Act," the bill would require private restroom, changing, and showering facilities to be segregated by biological sex ― as defined in the bill ― at all correction and detention facilities, college and university dormitories, and domestic violence centers in the state. Individuals other than the designated sex would be prohibited from entering those private spaces. The bill makes exceptions for members of the same family, young children needing assistance, custodians and first responders rendering aid. The bill does not prohibit shelters, schools, and correctional facilities from establishing single-occupancy areas that are not designated by sex. Opponents of the bill criticized it as an effort to target transgender individuals' security and participation in society. 'This bill is not about safety. It is about exclusion. Under the guise of protecting women, HB 571 seeks to codify rigid, outdated definitions of sex that fail to account for the existence of transgender people like me,' Elliot Certain, a transgender student at Middle Tennessee State University, told the Civil Justice Subcommittee last month. House Republicans passed the bill along party lines on Tuesday, without any debate after leadership called for an immediate vote, cutting off Democrats' ability to object. Ahead of the House floor vote on April 15, Rep. Aftyn Behn, D-Nashville, presented amendments seeking to allow transgender individuals to use facilities of their choice. Republicans voted them down. 'This bill basically insinuates that trans individuals who use the bathroom of their choice are predators and that they do not deserve to use bathrooms and other accommodations that suit them,' Behn argued. 'This bill is about fear. This is not about safety. … There is no epidemic of trans Tennesseans causing harm in bathrooms.' Separately this year, Bulso sponsored a bill requiring residential education programs in Tennessee to segregate restrooms and shower facilities by 'immutable biological sex.' Lee signed the bill into law earlier this month. State law already bars transgender students from accessing sex-based multi-use restrooms and changing facilities, instead requiring schools to offer another 'reasonable accommodation' to transgender students and school staff. A federal judge dismissed a legal challenge last September. Vivian Jones covers state government and politics for The Tennessean. Reach her at vjones@ This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: TN House passes bill to segregate college bathrooms by biological sex
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New North Carolina bill similar to former bathroom bill draws controversy: ‘Here we go again'
GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — A new bill filed got an immediate reaction from North Carolina lawmakers. 'Here we go again. HB2. Have we not learned our lesson?' North Carolina Senator Michael Garrett said. Garrett and other Democrats are concerned we are taking a trip back in time to 2016. That is when a controversial bill called HB2, known as the bathroom bill, passed. It said people could only use the bathroom labeled as the same sex as the one listed on their birth certificate. That law was later repealed. Last week, a similar bill was filed in the North Carolina Senate. It's called the Women's Safety and Protection Act. It says that people of one biological sex should not share bathrooms, locker rooms, dorm rooms or other private spaces with people who are not biologically the same sex, regardless of how they identify. The bill also says you cannot change the sex on your birth certificate or driver's license. The primary sponsor of the bill is NC Senator Vickie Sawyer. She said this is clearly not a repeat of the bathroom bill, but some Democrats describe it as the bathroom bill on steroids. 'It was really just a terrible mistake, and it costs us a lot reputationally and economically, and I couldn't believe we are about to revisit it again. Why didn't we learn a lesson?' North Carolina Representative Pricey Harrison said. Democratic lawmakers have two main concerns with the bill. The first concern is for the transgender community. 'I find these are very troubling attacks on a tiny part of our population that are just living their lives,' Harrison said. The second concern is for more loss in business for the state. 'We have learned our lesson in this state with HB2, which costs our state billions of dollars in economic development, not even counting what it cost individual businesses and companies,' Garrett said. After several attempts for a week, Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly who represent the Piedmont Triad did not agree to answer questions about the bill. Sawyer also declined an interview but sent a radio show recording from last week where she discussed it. Sawyer said this is different from the original bathroom bill because it only impacts certain public buildings and not local business owners or private industry. She said the reason for the bill is to keep women safe. She brought up examples of a female college freshman forced to share a dorm room with a transgender female or younger students forced to share a public-school bathroom with transgender girls. The proposal includes places like K-12 schools, universities, rape crisis centers, prisons, jails and domestic violence shelters. Sawyer said it is aimed at those 'sexual deviants' that will go into the bathroom for other reasons, and this law gives women the right to protect themselves. When FOX8 asked her for specific examples of this type of behavior, she did not respond. 'I have heard from Republican parents of trans students from Democratic parents, unaffiliated voters. There is a broad coalition against this because they know the state has better things to do than policing bathrooms and putting targets on the back of our most vulnerable citizens,' Garrett said. 'It seems to be hurtful and hateful and serves no good purpose,' Harrison said. If approved, the bill would go into effect on Oct. 1, but it has a long way to go first. The bill was just filed one week ago in the NC Senate, and it would need to pass the North Carolina House and the NC Senate and be signed off on by the governor. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
North Carolina Senate proposal again seeks to bar transgender people from specified public restrooms
A demonstrator holds a sign reading "Trans Kids Belong" at a March 2024 rally outside the North Carolina Legislative Building. Republican state senators have introduced a bill in 2025 that would enact new restrictions on the rights of transgender people. (Photo: Clayton Henkel/NC Newsline) A group of North Carolina state senators is seeking to enact a new ban on transgender people using bathrooms and other single-sex facilities that correspond to their gender identity, nearly a decade after the state's infamous 2016 'bathroom bill.' Filed Tuesday, Senate Bill 516, entitled the 'Women's Safety and Protection Act,' would bar trans people from using unisex restrooms, changing facilities, and sleeping quarters that correspond to their gender identities. It would also define 'male' and 'female' in state law strictly according to assigned sex at birth and prohibit the modification of sex markers on birth certificates and driver's licenses. Introduced by lead sponsors Sen. Vickie Sawyer (R-Iredell) and Sen. Brad Overcash (R-Gaston), the bill states its purpose as twofold: 'to clarify and reconcile the meaning of the terms biological sex, gender, and any other related terms in State law' and to 'provide protections for women against sexual assault, harassment, and violence' and other 'acts of abuse committed by biological men.' Joining Sawyer and Overcash in sponsoring the bill are Republican state senators Lisa Barnes, Warren Daniel, Bobby Hanig, and Ralph Hise. Hise and Daniel voted in favor of the House Bill 2 bathroom ban in 2016, while the other sponsors were not yet serving in the legislature. None of the bill's sponsors responded to a request for comment. Unlike the 2016 ban, Senate Bill 516 takes aim at a smaller scope of facilities — prisons and other confinement facilities, domestic violence and rape crisis centers, and public schools — and specifically those that receive state funds. But where that bill's scope was limited to bathrooms and changing rooms, this proposal also specifies sleeping quarters, and its emphasis on shelters has prompted concerns from civil rights advocates that trans women seeking protection from domestic violence and sexual abuse could be placed at risk for further violence. 'Transgender people already face higher rates of harassment and violence than cisgender peers,' said Reighlah Collins, policy counsel at the ACLU of North Carolina. 'This is just setting up trans people for further attacks and further vulnerability in these places where people are supposed to be safe.' The bill includes exemptions for family use of facilities, rendering medical or emergency aid, performing custodial work, inspections, and maintenance, and law enforcement activities. It also excludes policies at domestic violence and rape crisis centers to accommodate minors and individuals who require physical assistance. The legislation would require that all bathrooms, changing facilities, and sleeping quarters at the facilities it covers be used by individuals of one sex at a time, not including those exemptions. And it prohibits public schools from hosting events where students share sleeping quarters from grouping together students of different sexes unless they have received permission from parents or guardians. Jazmynne Cruz, a spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ rights organization Equality NC, wrote in an emailed statement that the group was 'disheartened' by a bill they view as 'yet another attack on our transgender community.' 'As we continue to learn more about the implications of this bill, we remain committed to keeping you informed and sharing meaningful ways to support our transgender neighbors,' Cruz wrote. 'Our fight for equality continues, and we are stronger together.' Advocates for the bill framed the issue in terms of protecting women. Ashley Vaughan, the press director for the North Carolina Values Coalition — a religious right advocacy organization — wrote in a statement in response to the bill that 'men are men, women are women, and men should not be allowed to rob women of their safety and privacy.' 'Defining male and female by biology in North Carolina law is important because when men can identify as women it invalidates hundreds of laws and policies designed to protect women,' Vaughan wrote. 'We need to protect women and girls in private spaces where they are vulnerable.' Collins argued that such framing is disingenuous, and that the bill's enforcement mechanism — which opens up facilities and state agencies that do not comply to lawsuits — risks exposing all women to the use of invasive techniques to determine individuals' birth sex, such as physical searches and examinations. 'Senate Bill 516 would leave all women — transgender or not — vulnerable to accusations and discrimination based on how well they conform to someone else's standard for their gender,' Collins said. 'If they don't look like what people expect people to look like in that bathroom, they are likely to face pushback and really setting them up for danger.' Less than a decade ago, North Carolina experienced an enormous national and international backlash after the implementation of HB 2, the 'bathroom bill' that barred trans people from using public restrooms corresponding to their gender identity throughout the state. The bill prompted business leaders around the country to pull projects from North Carolina in a show of protest, costing the state an estimated $3.76 billion according to the Associated Press. The state also lost out on major sporting events, including the 2017 NBA All-Star Game, which was set to be played in Charlotte but ultimately moved to New Orleans. Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University, said that context makes him 'surprised' that senators would broach another bathroom bill, even as national sentiment has moved right on some trans issues in the intervening decade. 'I expected the General Assembly to lean into bills around gender-affirming care for minors and about trans women in sports — two parts of the trans issue where they seem to be on the side of public opinion,' he said. 'I was a little bit surprised to see a bill get introduced that seems to go back in time, to sort of give away the rhetorical advantage they seem to have on this issue.' Cooper noted that top Republican leaders — like Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, whose support, he said, would give 'a golden highway to passage' for almost any bill — had not joined onto SB 516 as a sponsor, suggesting there may not be an appetite among leadership for such a far-reaching measure. 'The bathroom issue, the driver's license issue — those seem to be places where the public might be a little bit more on the trans rights side,' Cooper said. 'I could see that kind of backlash [that occurred after HB 2]. I can almost guarantee, if this becomes law, there will be lawsuits, there will be backlash.' But President Donald Trump won reelection in part by launching broad attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris for her support of transgender rights, with campaign ads castigating her for being 'for they/them' while Trump was 'for you' and for stating during the 2020 campaign that she would support government-funded gender-affirming surgery for undocumented immigrants. 'Trump got this right, and now North Carolina got this right,' wrote Vaughan, the North Carolina Values Coalition spokesperson. And other Republican legislatures states have passed laws restricting trans rights with far less pushback than North Carolina received in 2016. Should SB 516 become law, North Carolina would be the fourth states to codify 'male' and 'female' by assigned sex at birth, the seventh state forbidding the change of sex markers on birth certificates, and the 15th to bar trans people from at least some single-sex spaces aligning with their gender identity. SB 516 comes amid a wave of legislation in North Carolina seeking to curtail the rights of trans people to express their gender identity and restrict their access to gender-affirming healthcare. In 2023, North Carolina banned gender-affirming care for minors and barred trans student athletes from participating in women's sports at most schools, two issues that Trump championed on the campaign trail the following year. 'This is part of a coordinated, larger strategy across the country to push transgender people out of public and civic life, despite the clear signs that this is discriminatory and doesn't work,' said Collins, the ACLU policy counsel. A group of GOP lawmakers also introduced a bill Wednesday that would seek to expand parents' access to their kids' medical records, examinations and treatment, including discussions of gender identity. House Bill 519, labeled the 'Parents' Medical Bill of Rights' by its sponsors, would grant parents the right 'to access and review all medical records' of their child. It was prompted, lawmakers say, by constituent complaints that common medical practice allowed children starting at 12 to opt out of sharing information with their parents. 'We must stop operating under a system that sidelines parents and assumes institutions knows better,' said Rep. Jennifer Balkcom (R-Henderson), who said her son had just turned 12 and had seen medical professionals asking for his consent to share information. 'I'm paying for the insurance,' added Rep. Brian Biggs (R-Randolph). 'I want to be involved.' At the core of that medical practice is a 50-year-old law created to allow minors to discuss sensitive medical topics, including pregnancy and venereal disease, with a doctor. But the bill sponsors say it's led to conversations and decisions they don't support — such as being vaccinated for COVID-19 or having discussions about sexuality. 'This has to stop,' Biggs said. If the bill were to become law, it would likely have wide-ranging impacts on sensitive medical discussions for children — including those dealing with pregnancy, sexuality and gender-affirming care. (In North Carolina, gender-affirming care is banned until age 18; abortion is banned after 12 weeks of pregnancy.) Neither bill has yet to be scheduled for a committee hearing. NC Newsline's Galen Bacharier contributed reporting.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NC Republicans propose new ‘bathroom bill'
State Republicans have introduced Senate Bill 516, known as the 'Women's Safety and Protection Act,' which aims to restrict transgender individuals from using public restrooms that do not correspond to their biological sex. The bill mandates that bathrooms in public schools and other facilities be designated for use by one biological sex at a time. It also seeks to prevent transgender individuals from changing the gender on their birth certificates and requires driver's licenses to reflect a person's sex at birth. One year later, lawmakers still divided over HB2 Senate Bill 516 is reminiscent of the controversial 'bathroom bill,' also known as HB2, that became law in North Carolina nine years ago, which similarly restricted restroom access based on biological sex. This bill does not affect private entities, and it does not affect employment. HB 2, which was repealed a year later, led to billions of dollars in lost economic investment in North Carolina, according to an Associated Press analysis of state financial records at the time. VIDEO: AP Exclusive: 'Bathroom bill' to cost North Carolina $3.76B
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New ‘bathroom bill' introduced in NC Senate
RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — Republicans in the North Carolina Senate introduced a new bill that would restrict which bathrooms transgender individuals can use. Senate Bill 516, called the Women's Safety and Protection Act, aims to protect women against sexual assault, harassment and violence in private settings like bathrooms. Democrats are blasting the bill. 'People want to just live their lives, and they don't want to be attacked in this way,' said Rep. Julie von Haefen, who represents parts of southern Wake County. Part of the legislation includes the use by one biological sex rule, requiring bathrooms, changing rooms and other private areas to 'only be used by one designated biological sex at a time.' Its introduction comes nearly eight years to the day that former Governor Roy Cooper repealed the controversial House Bill 2, which similarly designated bathroom-use by sex at birth. 'That's just an example of, didn't we learn our lesson when HB 2 was originally in the state and how much damage it caused? Now we're just bringing it up again, rehashing it again just to attack people for no reason,' von Haefen said. The bill also restricts transgender individuals from requesting to change their sex on their birth certificates. Equality North Carolina, which rallied with state lawmakers for reproductive freedoms and LGBTQ+ protection said in part, 'While we gathered in solidarity, we were disheartened to learn of yet another attack on our transgender community—this time in the form of SB 516.' The North Carolina Values Coalition, meanwhile, is applauding the bill, in part, 'North Carolina must return to the common sense understanding that men are men, women are women, and men should not be allowed to rob women of their safety and privacy by invading their private spaces.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
