Bill Banning Trans Students From Playing Sports In Accordance With Their Gender Identity Passes

Discriminatory Bill Allows For ‘Physical Examination’ Of Students By Medical Professionals To Determine Sex

Transgender students in South Dakota minutes ago were just dealt a significant blow. State House lawmakers passed HB 1112, a bill that requires public schools to treat the sex of transgender students as their birth certificates state, or even, should the birth certificate be unavailable or not list a gender, to allow a “physical examination.”

The vote was 45-23.

The bill’s sponsor is GOP Rep. Roger Hunt, who last year, speaking on the legislation, insisted that this “is South Dakota. We haven’t adopted the East Coast culture. We haven’t adopted the West Coast culture. We maintain our own culture.”

ACLU Policy Director Libby Skarin states the bill’s purpose is to prevent transgender high school students from participating in sports.

As Skarin mentioned, HB 1008 is another anti-trans bill.

Last week, South Dakota State Sen. David Omdahl said to trans people, “I’m sorry if you’re so twisted you don’t even know who you are.”

Debate on the floor today rose to an ugly level, with one lawmaker in particular sharing his personal beliefs as facts while he attacked both transgender children and their supporters.

Rep. Steven Haugaard called the tragic increased rates of suicide among transgender people the “result of internal confusion,” and not bullying or discrimination. He added that people, like parents and teachers, who endorse such confusion – i.e., being transgender – “lend credibility to a subject that’s relatively new in nature.”

The bill’s purpose, its text states, is to “establish a determinant in identifying a student’s sexual identity for purpose of participation in high school activities and to declare void any present or future transgender policy of the South Dakota High School Activities Association.”

In 2014 the South Dakota High School Activities Association passed a rather progressive policy supporting transgender students that lawmakers have been attacking ever since. It gave trans students and their parents the opportunity to make requests concerning which sports team the student should play on. Today’ bill, should it become law, would negate that.

Last year, Republican Rep. Jim Bolin said the SDHSAA’s policy protecting trans students was a “significant error.”

HB 1112 voids the SDHSAA’s policy and states the “board of directors of the South Dakota High School Activities Association may not adopt any transgender policy.”

It goes on to state the “sole determinant of a student’s sexual identity is the sexual identity noted on the student’s certificate of birth. If no sexual identity is noted on the student’s certificate of birth, the sole determinant is the sexual identity noted on the South Dakota High School Activities Association physical exam form that is completed by a health care professional at the student’s physical examination.”

Monday night, as NCRM just reported, the South Dakota House passed a bill that extends special protections to anyone – person or company, corporation, non-profit, club, with few exceptions – opposed to same-sex marriage or LGBT people in general, if they cite their “sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.”

 

Image: Screenshot via YouTube