In the week since the Obama administration distributed guidance to schools about how to accommodate transgender students, Republican leaders across the country have lodged a variety of protests. On Thursday, lawmakers in Oklahoma took matters into their own hands, introducing a bill limiting bathroom access for transgender students and a resolution calling for Obama’s impeachment.
The bill, SB 1619, mirrors the effect of North Carolina’s HB2 in some ways, but has its own fresh approach for segregating transgender students. Technically, it doesn’t actually require schools to block trans students from accessing the bathrooms that match their gender identities — at least not directly.
If a school grants such access, however, “a student enrolled in the school district or the parent or legal guardian of a student enrolled in the school district may request a religious accommodation.” The only way the bill allows for a school to accommodate a “student’s sincerely held religious beliefs” is to guarantee them access to a facility that does explicitly ban transgender students. If they aren’t provided such a restroom or changing facility, they can sue.
And here’s the kicker: the bill forbids the accommodation from being a single-occupancy facility. If a student objects to there being a trans student in the restroom, that student has to be provided a comparable facility that is trans-free, but they can’t be forced to use a private one. It’s often transgender students who are segregated into these separate facilities, which adds to their ostracization and the stigma that hinders their education experience.
This sentiment was similarly expressed in a lawsuit recently filed against an Illinois school that — after intervention from the Department of Education — allowed a transgender student full access to the regular locker rooms. The suit complains that the private single-stall restrooms that were originally the accommodation forced on the transgender student were simply unacceptable alternatives for the students uncomfortable sharing a facility with a transgender student. Like that lawsuit, the Oklahoma bill does not concern itself for what happens to transgender students whatsoever, so long as other students have the privileged access to trans-free restrooms that they think that they deserve.
To drive home its transphobic intentions, SB 1619 also includes an “emergency” clause to make sure it takes effect immediately instead of a few months after passage. “It being immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health and safety,” it reads, “an emergency is hereby declared to exist.”
Accompanying SB 1619 is Senate Concurrent Resolution 43, a direct response to the guidance provided by the Departments of Justice and Education. It condemns the Departments as “contrary to the values of the citizens of Oklahoma and to the interests of public safety” and calls upon the state attorney general to “defend, by any means necessary,” the “overreach” of the guidance.
The Resolution also calls for President Obama’s impeachment, as well as the related administrators connected to the guidance:
The members of the United States House of Representatives elected from this state are hereby requested to file articles of impeachment against the President of the United States, the Attorney General of the United States, the Secretary of Education, and any other federal official liable to impeachment who has exceeded his or her constitutional authority with respect to the letter referenced in this resolution, based upon the grounds that the Constitution of the United States does not grant the executive branch of the federal government any authority whatsoever over the public education system, nor over the use of restrooms or other facilities thereof.
SB 1619 and SCR 43 were introduced with just a week left in a session in which a record number of anti-LGBT bills failed to advance. But they were also introduced on the same day that lawmakers passed a bill criminalizing abortion procedures. If Gov. Mary Fallin (R) signs it into law, any doctor performing an abortion for a purpose other than saving the mother’s life will be found guilty of a felony and face up to three years in prison. The legislature’s conservative credentials are not in doubt.