Lawmakers say they have to balance the needs of transgendered students with the sensitivies of others. "It's been understood

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Henry Seaton is a senior at Beech High School in Hendersonville. As a transgender student, he doesn’t use the boys’ bathroom or the girls’. Instead, to make his classmates comfortable, Seaton’s been assigned the teachers’ restroom.

“Only being able to use one restroom in the school has proven to be really difficult for me,” Seaton told Tennessee lawmakers Tuesday.

“There are lots of times when I don’t use the restroom and I go home with stomachaches and dehydration.”

Transgender students would not be allowed to use the school bathrooms of the gender they identify with, according to a proposal making its way through the Tennessee legislature.

Critics of the measure, including Gov. Bill Haslam, say it’ll remove schools’ discretion to set bathroom policies for trans students on a case-by-case basis. They also argue it will be difficult to enforce as well as potentially costly.

But even without the law, students and parents told a House subcommittee it’s not easy to be transgender in Tennessee schools — with bathrooms and locker rooms being a place where their gender identity is particularly sensitive.

Because of bullying and bias, transgender students say they have few options when it comes to restrooms. Even when they’re not banned outright, transgender students say they often avoid using bathrooms.

They argue a proposal that would assign them to the bathroom of their birth sex would just validate discrimination.

On the other side, supporters of the proposal, House Bill 2414, say letting transgender students use the restrooms will unsettle other kids.

They argued that teenagers are already awkward about their bodies — a feeling that can be compounded if they’re asked to disrobe in front of trans students. And what, they ask, is to stop a mischievous teenage boy from claiming to be trans to get a peek at the girls’ shower?

Opponents of the bill respond with other solutions, like more privacy stalls.

“My sense is a lot of this issue is coming from our generation,” Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, said to lawmakers. “But we are moving into a world that changes, and it is our role as adults to talk about inclusivity and treating people with respect and dignity.”

They also point out potential pitfalls to the legislation. Gina Hausser, the Tennessee Board of Regents’ lobbyist, notes that it has 188,000 students in its system. How, she asks, are university officials supposed to check the birth certificates of all those students and ensure they’re using the right bathroom?

But the proposal’s sponsor, state Rep. Susan Lynn, R-Mt. Juliet, says opponents are inventing hardships. She says her measure just enshrines practices that have worked well for generations.

“It’s been understood: Boys use the boys’ room and girls use the girls’ room. That has been an honor system that people have simply obeyed,” she says.

Members of the House panel approved the measure on a voice vote, sending it on for further discussion. Lawmakers say they have to balance the sensitivities of both sides.

But it might be dollars and cents that decide the issue. Opponents of the bill warn that if it passes, it could trigger lawsuits, including from the federal government, which has threatened to withhold funding from schools that refuse to accommodate trans students.