Morgan Hunlen never thought twice about bathrooms. Growing up in Georgia as a straight male they were just there, ready to be used whenever nature called. After enrolling at Middle Tennessee State University, Hunlen came out as a transgender woman. As she soon learned, the transition didn’t just mean reshaping her identity, but embarking on a constant search for the nearest accessible bathroom.

In the heart of MTSU’s nearly 23,000-student campus, the business and aerospace building is home to many of Hunlen’s courses. Because it lacks a gender-neutral bathroom, the senior must leave the building to find a stall elsewhere, requiring her to take a trip that can unnecessarily force her to miss parts of her classroom lessons. But she says the trek, as inconvenient as it may be, is necessary for her to feel safe while doing her business.

“On this campus, any person can use the bathroom you feel most safest in,” Hunlen said. “It’s a separate-but-equal situation for transgender students. That’s better than having nothing at all.”

Hunlen’s hassle could soon become a hazard. Tennessee lawmakers are now considering legislation that would require public school students to use restrooms and locker rooms that correspond with the gender that’s listed on their birth certificate, mirroring similar legislation recently signed into law in North Carolina. She says the law, which has already sparked threats of an economic boycott, would hurt transgender students who already find themselves in a precarious situation.

Three months ago, Tennessee lawmakers introduced legislation they said was needed to protect the privacy of all students across the state. Representatives Susan Lynn and Mike Bell have also characterized their effort as a uniform solution to a problem facing public schools. The lawmakers did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Both measures have moved forward as part of a recent wave of legislation that seeks to limit the rights of LGBT people following the US supreme court’s ruling on same-sex marriage.

“Letting boys into girls’ restrooms and changing areas, for example, is an invasion of privacy and a threat to student safety,” Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Matt Sharp said in a statement late last month.

“[These bills allow] schools to make single-stall restrooms available to students who aren’t comfortable using restrooms designated for their biological sex while also protecting the privacy rights of other students – especially children who have suffered sexual trauma in the past. They are especially vulnerable to harm from exposure to unclothed members of the opposite sex.”

Justin Sweatman-Weaver, chair of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network’s Middle Tennessee chapter, says those claims are based on “imaginary threats” from “completely misconceived perceptions” of transgender people. In numerous Tennessee schools, educators have on a case-by-case basis worked with transgender students to ensure them safe bathroom access with positive results.

If the measure passed, the Tennessee Equality Project’s executive director, Chris Sanders, says, the law would prevent such accommodations unless an appeal were granted, which could potentially subject at-risk youth to further harassment. To avoid bullying now, he says, transgender students without safe bathroom access avoid sipping from the water fountain and entering the stalls altogether. In temporarily staying out of harm’s way, they instead subject themselves to potential long-term problems that range from dehydration to urinary tract infections.

“For students, it could even result in depression, a drop in their academic performance, dropping out from school, or even suicide,” Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition lobbyist Marisa Richmond said. “Before that, it could mean increased levels of substance abuse, as people will try to numb the emotional pain by turning to drugs or alcohol.”

As transgender rights remain under siege – lawmakers recently sent to Tennessee governor Bill Haslam’s desk another bill that would let counselors refuse services to them – transgender Tennesseans are faced with the decision of whether to leave their home state. Raised in ultra-conservative Sumner County, 18-year-old transgender student Henry Seaton spent much of his high school experience making transition from female to male.

Henry Seaton spent much of his high school experience making transition from female to male. Photograph: Max Blau/The Guardian

“At the beginning, people asked weird questions and called me slurs in the hallway,” he said. “Some teachers had issues. But people got used to it.”

Seaton is now planning for life after high school. He’s already quit his jobs at Panera Bread, is finishing up his final few classes, and plans to start an internship with a local not-for-profit group that works with at-risk LGBT youth following graduation. Someday soon, Seaton would like to return to school. Through the state’s scholarship program, he could receive two years of tuition-free education at a community or technical college. In his mind, there’s just one thing standing between him and that free ride: the fate of the bathroom bills.

“I think about that decision a lot,” he says. “I would either have to go to a private university and pay a lot of money [to have safe bathroom access] or just go to the women’s restroom at a public university, which would just be really awkward. It’s disheartening.”

Days before North Carolina passed its bathroom bill, Lynn and Bell’s legislation stalled and was believed to have died for the rest of the legislative session. Last week, though, amended legislation that would allow transgender students to appeal against the rule passed through the Tennessee house education committee. Both bills are expected to go in front of the finance, ways and means subcommittee and, if approved, would then move to the house floor for a potential vote.

While LGBT activists have highlighted the human risks, it’s that economic argument that has slowed down the Tennessee bills.

Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU’s Tennessee chapter, says passage of either bill would potentially cost the state more than $1bn in federal funding due to violations of Title IX. Haslam, who has remained quiet about a potential veto, has specifically expressed concerns that the bills would discriminate on the basis of sex.

The mayor of Nashville, Megan Barry, last week estimated that the bills could cost Tennessee’s capital city $58m in direct visitor spending due to potential convention cancellations. On 6 April, Dow Chemical Company, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Choice Hotels and other corporations signed a letter sent by the Human Rights Campaign to state leaders demanding they reject the measures. Viacom, which owns Country Music Television, urged lawmakers in a separate statement to abandon the legislation in the name of “tolerance, diversity, and inclusion”.

“To be against equality is embarrassing,” said Sanders, the Tennessee Equality Project director. “Corporations don’t want their employees visiting another office, even if it’s across a state border, to have fewer rights. It doesn’t make sense to them. They don’t want to be seen as supportive of that.”

Economic opposition to the North Carolina anti-bathroom bill signed into law and an anti-LGBT law in Mississippi have served as additional warning to Tennessee lawmakers, as corporations cancel plans to expand in the states and artists cancel planned performances.

Still, with the bills resurrected, the Family Action Council of Tennessee, a Christian advocacy group, has dialed up its pressure over the bathroom ban by sending state lawmakers emails that have questioned their integrity. Citing the potential for “bodily exposure” by transgender students, Fact’s president, David Fowler, who also did not respond to requests seeking comment, went so far as to compare the moral fight over the transgender bathroom access to a “new” US civil war.

“I sense there are a lot of people down south,” Fowler wrote in a blog post, “…who want to live in a place that has enough common sense to keep men out of women’s restrooms.”