Another attempt at killing a non-discrimination set of laws and rulings has been started in the state of Washington. It is under the disguise of the anti-bathroom, save the children/mothers/students from perverts.
The text of the proposed act makes several changes to state law:
- Declares “null and void and of no effect” the Human Rights Commission’s rules guaranteeing bathroom access for transgender people.
- Bans the Human Rights Commission from ever adopting rules related to gender identity in sex-segregated facilities.
- Clarifies that the state’s nondiscrimination laws still allow restrooms and locker rooms to be designated “for the exclusive use by biological male persons only or biological female persons only” and that no others (i.e. transgender people) are guaranteed such access.
- Preempts municipalities from passing their own bathroom protections for transgender people.
- Prohibits transgender students from accessing sex-segregated bathrooms in schools, only allowing them to access to “single-stall bathrooms, uni-sex bathrooms, or controlled use of faculty bathrooms, locker rooms, or shower rooms.”.
- Allows students to sue schools for $2,500 “for each instance in which they encountered a person of the opposite sex while accessing a public school student restroom, locker room, or shower room designated for use by the aggrieved students’ sex,” as well as monetary damages “from the offending public school for all psychological, emotional, and physical harm suffered.”
ThinkProgress Article
Remember the ballot initiative filed last month by Just Want Privacy, the group that formed after the anti-transgender bill narrowly failed in the legislature? Initiative 1505 was submitted to the Washington Secretary of State on March 2, and if passed would roll back civil rights protections that have been on the books for the past 10 years by deliberately barring transgender people from bathrooms, locker rooms, and other gender-segregated facilities.
SeattleWeekly Article
And from the comments section of the Seattle Weekly article above, someone wrote:
The 4th circuit court of appeals disagreed with you. If this Initiative passes, Washington will be in violation of Title IX and federal funds for our schools will be withheld by the federal government. Our state government is already scrambling to find the 4 billion dollars needed to comply with the Supreme Court order on funding. When you add the federal funds we will lose, the shortfall that will have to be covered by a mammoth increase in property taxes or by institution of a state income tax will be a death blow to our economy. Thank you Family Policy Institute of Washington.
We need to fight this all across the country. Sue if you have to, VOTE against this crap when it comes up. Elect new government officials that go along this this crap.
DBA