The Nevada Assembly Judiciary Committee went out of their way to resurrect and pass a bill which had been idle in the Education Committee for a month.
Disgraced former Speaker Elect Ira Hansen is Chair of the Judiciary Committee, which is dominated by conservative Republicans.
Hansen stepped down as incoming speaker last November after his history of racist and sexist writings was revealed.
Assembly Bill 375 will now go on to the full Assembly after passing on a party-line vote.
Bill Proponents said it was necessary as a safety measure which would prevent transgender students from predatory behavior while also preventing non-transgender students from pretending to be transgender in order to stalk and sexually abuse other students.
Assemblywoman Victoria Dooling, R-Las Vegas, claimed the bill she sponsored is needed because schools are increasingly letting transgender students use the bathroom of their identified gender and not biological anatomy, which she called a problem.
Dooling submitted a letter into the record from an unknown Nevada physician whose name was redacted by Hansen.
It’s protecting the need for parents who have to worry over their children’s privacy. They need to go to the bathrooms of their biological birth.
--Dooling
[The bill] would conflict with federal protections for transgender and gender non-conforming students and expose such students to additional bullying and harassment.
School districts (outside of Nevada) have already been found liable for discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression under both federal and state law.
--Alison Gill, senior legislative counsel, Human Rights Campaign
Washoe County recently passed a policy change allowing transgender students to use the restroom of their target gender. Previously they had been forced to use separate bathrooms and had been bullied as a result, leading the students to cease eating and drinking at school, resulting in at least one child experiencing health problems severe enough for her to be at risk of being admitted to a hospital.
Judy Chiasson, who oversees the Los Angeles Unified School District's policy of allowing transgender students to use the restrooms with which they are most comfortable testified that there has never been an incident there of a student pretending to use the restroom to spy on or assault anyone. LAUSD has 1.5 times the students of the entire state of Nevada.
If anything, the transgender student is going to be the victim.
--Chiasson
If we have not had school districts report such incidents, why are we putting this bill forward? This law seems to do anything but help.
--Assemblyman Nelson Araujo, D-Clark
Araujo also expressed concern that passage of the bill would likely result in the filing of civil rights lawsuits since the U. S. Department of Education has declared that Title IX protects transgender and gender non-conforming students from discrimination and segregation.
Alliance Defending Freedom legal counsel Jeremy Tedesco countered that Title IX actually authorizes policies like AB375 (and that the sky is puce and up is down).
Mr. Tedesco, I want to be frank, I think you're playing fast and loose with the law. We are taking a risk with this bill.
--Assemblyman Elliot Anderson, D-Las Vegas
Vanessa Spinazola of the Nevada ACLU warned that Nevada schools would be at risk of losing federal funding if the bill were passed and later found to be in violation of Title IX...and she said it "will be litigated,if it passes."
I don’t think it’s my place to be policing bathrooms.
--Assemblywoman Olivia Diaz (D-Las Vegas), who teaches at the elementary school level
Transgender Allies Group President Brock Maylath said that statistically, transgender students are faced with more bullying and commit suicide at higher rates than any other student group. He said the bill would effectively legalize discrimination.
No record of a transgender person harassing a non-transgender person in a restroom exists.
A vote in favor of this bill will lead to institutionalized marginalization. The blood of innocent children affected by this act will be on the hands of anyone who votes for this bill.
--Maylath
AB375 is an unnecessary solution in search of a problem.
--Arli Christian, National Center for Transgender Equality
A Williams Institute study from 2013 found that "nearly 60 percent of the transgender people it surveyed said they had avoided going out in public because of worries about safe access to public restrooms, and 54 percent said they had physical problems like dehydration or kidney infections from trying to avoid using public bathrooms."
The bill also flies in the face of the Nevada law which bans discrimination against transgender people in employment, housing, and public accommodations.