Which bathroom transgender students use up for debate

Dozens showed up Friday to support or denounce a Nevada Assembly bill that would require public school bathrooms, locker rooms and showers to be used by students of one gender — and the one designated on their birth certificates.

Assembly Bill 375 would not allow students to use facilities based on the way they identify their own gender.

Opponents said the bill would further subject transgender students to being ostracized in public schools.

Supporters said the measure offers accommodation, not discrimination, and is needed to ensure student privacy is preserved.

“School districts around the nation are being coerced into implementing policies that violate the privacy of a majority of students,” said Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resources Institute, a lobbying force for Christian conservatives based in Sacramento, Calif., that’s also active in Nevada.

The creation of coed bathrooms favors “special rights for the few over the concern for privacy, modesty and comfort for so many more students,” England said.

Washoe County School District officials recently began making bathrooms coed for kindergarten through 12th grade, England said. A similar bath- and locker room policy is being implemented in Clark County schools without parental or public notification, she said.

A Clark County schools spokeswoman said the transgender policy is still being drafted and is the result of a review of different laws and regulations as well as the need to provide guidance to principals regarding student needs.

Draft guidelines have been provided to principals for comments and discussion, the spokeswoman said. School officials are waiting for the end of the legislative session to determine what changes might be needed before presenting the policy to the public, the spokeswoman said. The school board eventually will be called on to approve the policy in a public meeting.

Accommodating transgender students should not be done at the expense of children who would be uncomfortable sharing restrooms and lockers rooms with the opposite biological gender, England said.

Opponents of the legislation said the proposal amounted to a form of institutionalized bullying.

Tamara Zuchowski, an advanced practice registered nurse at the Reno community health center Northern Nevada Hopes, said the bill would legalize discrimination in Nevada schools against transgender students.

“This bill would put all transgender students in danger by forcing them to use biologically congruent restrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities that go against their core gender identity,” Zuchowski said.

The bill would lead more transgender students to drop out of school and increase their risk for considering suicide, two statistical areas where transgender students already have higher than average numbers, opponents said.

“Preventing students from using the bathrooms of their peers is an example of bullying,” said Caitlyn Caruso, a Clark County high school senior. “The fact that we’re trying to legislate that is intrusive and, in fact, mean.”

Proponents of the bill said coed facilities have the potential of confusing and upsetting many more students, and access should be based on gender reality not identity. They argued AB375 is the best policy to accommodate all students in any given school district.

“When you have a biological male that is gender non-conforming, he feels betrayed by biology and he needs to be a girl,” England said. “Whether that child is a sixth-grader, an eighth-grader or a 10th-grader, and they access the restroom, the locker room of the opposite biological gender and disrobe, they are still biologically a male, and those girls are still uncomfortable.”

AB375, sponsored by Assemblywoman Vicki Dooling, R-Henderson, was debated Friday morning at a meeting of the Assembly Judiciary Committee. Proponents and opponents gathered in Carson City and via video in Las Vegas to talk to the panel. The bill required committee passage by Friday, but the panel did not take a vote Friday evening.

Contact Steven Moore at smoore@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4563.