The Idaho Senate Education Committee has passed a bill requiring students to use bathrooms that correspond to their biological sex, despite opponents saying the move would discriminate against transgender young people while adding to harmful rhetoric.
Backers say it would improve safety while allowing for accommodations.
The Lewiston Tribune reports, that Nampa Republican Representative Ben Adams presented the measure (SB 1100) that would designate separate bathrooms and changing facilities based on biological sex at schools, but require the schools to make available single-occupancy bathrooms to those who are “unwilling or unable” to use the multi-occupancy facilities that correspond to their sex.
If enacted, the legislation would allow any student who encounters someone of a different sex while using a changing facility or bathroom to seek civil action against the school if the school gave permission to that person to use the facility or the school failed to take reasonable steps to prohibit that other person from using the facility that didn’t correspond to their sex.
The student could sue as many as four years after the incident for as much as $5,000.
The bill now goes to the full Senate for consideration.
