SC attack on transgender rights hurts students and school budgets

Transgender young people face violence and harassment in the hallways, bathrooms and locker rooms of our public schools. This is a serious issue, but instead of ensuring that S.C. schools meet the obligation of providing an education to all students, lawmakers are pushing a bill that denies students the ability to use the bathroom that is best for them. Sens. Larry Grooms and Paul Campbell just fast-tracked a bill, S.1306, that withholds access to the appropriate facilities for transgender students in Berkeley County.

It was made clear during the failed attempt by Sen. Lee Bright to move a similar statewide attack (S.1203) that this is not only unnecessary, it is insulting and hateful. People do not need to be protected from the transgender community. Hundreds of municipalities provide protections for transgender people, including use of public facilities without limitations, and there have been no problems of the nature that proponents of these bills claim will happen. It is transgender people who are experiencing harassment and violence, not the other way around.

This legislation is likely the result of a recent meeting in which the Berkeley County school board committed to working one-on-one with families to meet the needs of transgender students. It is on a fast-track through the Legislature, a process that echoes what happened in North Carolina with HB2. The public has not been given the opportunity to offer testimony.

Last week, the U.S. departments of Education and Justice released a set of recommendations affirming that schools need to respect the rights of transgender students and allow them to use the facilities that match their gender identities. In fact, they said that not doing so is in breach of Title IX and could result in lost federal funding and litigation.

Bills such as S.1306 feed into the climate that results in violence and harassment of the transgender community. This is not only a waste of time when lawmakers could be advancing policies that actually help people, but it is an embarrassment to our state. We should be doing more to ensure that every S.C. student has not only a safe place to go to school but a warm bed to go home to at night.

All students in our state should feel confident that their rights are more important than the political agendas and personal beliefs of lawmakers.