Dana Ferguson

dferguson@argusleader.com

South Dakota's top prosecutor said he thinks the state needs a transgender bathroom policy for its public schools.

Attorney General Marty Jackley in an interview with Argus Leader Media Thursday said he supported legislation that would have made South Dakota the first state to bar transgender students from using bathrooms that don't match their biological sex and would have signed the bill if he was in Gov. Dennis Daugaard's place.

"I have a 12-year-old son and a nine-year-old little girl and I don’t want my daughter to come home and talk about being in the shower room with someone with male parts," Jackley said. "I think we’re to the point where we need to have a fair, non-discriminatory policy to address this."

Daugaard vetoed the measure last month, saying schools can make decisions at the local level on how they can handle transgender students. He also said the measure would have also created legal liability for the state's schools by forcing them to adopt policies that counter recent interpretations of federal discrimination law.

Under the measure, transgender students who didn't want to use bathrooms, locker rooms and shower rooms based on their biological sex would've been required to submit a request to their school for a "reasonable accommodation."

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Jackley has formed a political action committee and said he is laying the groundwork for a gubernatorial campaign, but has yet to formally announce. The attorney general said he'd been consulted by the bill's author, Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Florence, and supported it as long as the attorney general's office wasn't bound to represent any public school district that faced a lawsuit.

A broader law approved last month by North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has spurred boycotting by businesses and other state legislators and has fueled scorn from LGBT advocacy groups and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Jackley said he'd like to work with lawmakers to bring another measure that would be more palatable for business in South Dakota and could be more agreeable for the transgender community.

"I think there’s a way to go about it where we don’t need to discriminate and we don’t need to hurt economic development," he said.

Supporters of the South Dakota measure, including conservative Christian groups such as Family Heritage Alliance Action, said it would enhance the privacy of all students while opponents including LGBT advocacy rights groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and celebrity Caitlyn Jenner, said the bill was discriminatory.

Would-be tourists on both sides of the issue hijacked the state's tourism hashtag in February, saying they'd boycott the state if Daugaard didn't support their position on the bill. Several businesses and the city of Sioux Falls also asked Daugaard not to approve the measure.

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S.D. lawmaker looks to North Carolina transgender law