The Legislature has passed SB 456, an attempt to force trans people back into the closet. The bill bans trans people from using the correct restroom in certain state-owned buildings, and bars them from finding safety in domestic violence shelters, all under the guise of “defining” men and women.
The bill went through several changes, at one point including an amendment from Delegate JB Akers that would have permitted doctors to conduct genital exams of children without parental consent. While that amendment is no longer part of the legislation sent to the governor’s desk, it clearly underscores how policing gender harms everyone.
It is deeply troubling the extent to which our legislators are obsessed with other people’s genitals. While our infrastructure fails, our schools sit at the bottom of national rankings, and tens of thousands of West Virginians wonder if they will ever have access to clean drinking water, lawmakers are instead focused on making life worse for trans people in our state.
The bill has no enforcement mechanism, but will undoubtedly add to stigma against trans people and empower those who want to harass and intimidate them. But the Legislature’s efforts to erase trans people will ultimately fail. Trans people have always existed and there will never be a world in which they do not exist.
This bill is confusing, but the rights of students are not. Under Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, trans students have a right to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity and to not be segregated to unisex bathrooms, or the bathroom of their sex assigned at birth.
In passing this bill, lawmakers have again opened the state to potentially costly lawsuits. We will be watching closely.