Full Assembly to hear Nevada transgender bill

A bill to segregate Nevada's transgender students into separate school bathrooms passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee on Friday, the final day for bills to stay alive in the 2015 session.

Assembly Bill 375 survived the committee — dominated by conservative Republicans — on party lines. Only Democrats voted against it.

It will now be up to the full Assembly to decide if the controversial bill, described by opponents as illegal under federal law, should go any further.

Proponents of the bill call it a needed safety measure, citing hypothetical situations of predatory or pretend transgender students to make their case before state lawmakers on Friday.

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.

Transgender people identify themselves as the gender opposite of their biological gender, a realization that usually comes in elementary school. The condition is recognized by the American Psychiatric Association.

Students will take advantage of the allowance "to gain entrance into bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite gender to stalk and sexually abuse others," warned Dooling, reading a letter into the record from a Nevada physician, whom she wouldn't name for the Assembly Judiciary Committee holding Friday's hearing.

Committee Chairman Ira Hansen, R-Sparks, said he redacted the doctor's name. He wouldn't say why.

Hansen, a vocal supporter of the controversial bill, gave it a hearing Friday morning after it idled in the Assembly Education Committee for a month.

A long list of opponents argued that the bill is discriminatory and creates increased risk of assaults against transgender students by singling them out for separate bathrooms.

The group has a 50 percent suicide rate because of harassment, said high school students, adult advocates for transgender groups and the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. It was reported just this week that a transgender teenager in San Diego killed herself following school bullying and harassment.

Assemblyman James Ohrenschall, D-Las Vegas, expressed concern that the bill would "lead to more bullying" by identifying transgender students who've mostly been unknown as transgender up to now.

Critics don't only contend the bill is harmful. It flies in the face of federal law.

Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funds, said Vanessa Spinazola, legislative and advocacy director for the ACLU of Nevada, noting that the bill "will be litigated if it passes."

"The bill is proposed by nothing but hate and unjustified fear," said Brock Maylath, president and co-founder of Reno's Transgender Allies Group.

Assembly Bill 375 would mandate that bathrooms and locker rooms "only be used by persons of that biological sex" in Nevada public schools. The bill — filed by Dooling and Sen. Scott Hammond, R-Las Vegas — goes on to explicitly ban transgender students from bathrooms aligned to their asserted gender, forcing them to use a unisex restroom or faculty restroom.

Under the bill, these separate bathrooms for transgender students must be "the best available accommodations" that a school can provide.

"Separate is not equal. I thought we'd covered that in the Civil Rights in the 1960s," said Maylath, referencing the finding that the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation was unconstitutional.

"Best available accommodations makes me feel alienated," said Shane Greener, a transgender high school student in Las Vegas.

The Reno Gazette-Journal recently reported on multiple transgender students in Washoe County School District who were forced to use separate bathrooms and were bullied by other students as a result. These transgender students then refused to drink or eat in an attempt to avoid going to bathroom at school, resulting in health problems and risk of being admitted to the hospital for one student.

AB375 comes in reaction to districts like Washoe recently changing its practices to allow transgender students into bathrooms aligned to their asserted gender and prohibiting segregation into separate bathrooms.

The hypothetical risks of such an allowance has not been proven one way or another in Washoe – only initiating this regulation in February – but it's been debunked in the Los Angeles Unified School District, leading the California Legislature to pass a bill in 2013 allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of their choosing.

The Los Angeles district has 1.5 times as many students as all of Nevada and has not received one report of a student pretending to be transgender to spy on or assault students in school bathrooms or transgender students sexually assaulting or harassing other students, according to Judy Chiasson. She's overseen the district's allowance of transgender students into their chosen bathrooms since the policy was enacted a decade ago.

"If we have not had school districts report such incidents, why are we putting this bill forward?" said Assemblyman Nelson Araujo, D-Clark. "This law seems to do anything but help."

Araujo expressed concern for civil rights lawsuits that would likely result from this bill, if passed.

His concern stems from Title IX, the federal law which courts and the U.S. Department of Education have said protect transgender students from discrimination and segregation.

A lawyer in support of the bill argued otherwise.

"Title IX actually authorizes schools to implement policies like AB375," said Jeremy Tedesco, legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a group advocating for protections of Christian beliefs.

"Mr. Tedesco, I want to be frank, I think you're playing fast and loose with the law," replied Assemblyman Elliot Anderson, D-Las Vegas. "We are taking a risk with this bill."

If the bill were passed and found to be in violation of Title IX, Nevada schools would be at risk of losing federal funding, federal lawsuits and investigation by the Equal Opportunity Commission, warned Spinazola of the ACLU.