School ‘bathroom bill’ pre-filed in Kentucky
Legislation would limit bathrooms for use by transgender students
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 pre-filed by Hale on 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 feel like this is something we need to address to make sure it is not occurring,” Hale said.