Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signs transgender bathroom ban bill into law

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Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has signed a bill into law banning transgender students from using school bathrooms and locker rooms that match up with their gender identity.

The law requires people at Ohio K-12 schools and universities use the restroom that aligns with their gender assigned at birth. It also bans students from sharing overnight accommodations with people of the opposite sex from their assigned sex at birth at K-12 schools.  

This does not prevent a school from having single-occupancy facilities and does not apply to someone helping a person with a disability or a child younger than 10 years old being assisted by a parent, guardian or family member. 

The law will take effect 90 days after DeWine signed the bill.

A lawsuit is expected to be filed against this. The Ohio Capital Journal interviewed a Cleveland attorney over the summer about potential legal challenges with the bill, such as who would police such a policy? 

Several transgender Ohioans, allies and educators called on DeWine to veto the bill. The Ohio Capital Journal recently talked to a family who plans on moving out of Ohio because of anti-transgender legislation at the Statehouse. 

The bathroom ban (House Bill 183) was added to a bill that revises College Credit Plus (Senate Bill 104) in the eleventh hour of a House Session at the end of June before the lawmakers went on an extended break. 

The Ohio Senate concurred with the changes made to S.B. 104 during their first session back from break. 

State Reps. Beth Lear, R-Galena, and Adam Bird, R-New Richmond, introduced H.B. 183. State Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, introduced S.B. 104. 

About 3% of high school students identify as transgender, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The American Medical Association officially opposes policies preventing transgender individuals from accessing basic human services and public facilities consistent with gender identity.

Slightly more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth in Ohio considered suicide in 2022, according to the Trevor Project. 

About a third of LGBTQ+ students were prevented from using the bathroom that aligned with their gender and slightly more than a quarter were stopped from using the locker room that aligned with their gender, according to Ohio’s 2021 state snapshot by GLSEN, which examines the school experiences of LGBTQ middle and high school students.

Forty-two percent of transgender and nonbinary students were unable to use the bathroom that aligned with their gender and 36% couldn’t use the locker room that aligned with their gender, according to the Ohio GLSEN report. 

Transgender youth who can’t use the bathroom that aligns with their gender are at a greater risk of sexual violence, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Pediatrics.  

Other states with transgender bathroom bans

Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Florida, and Utah have laws that ban transgender people from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity in schools. 

Florida, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Tennessee’s laws have all been challenged. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit blocked Idaho’s law last year.  

North Carolina made history in 2016 by becoming the first state to ban bathroom access to transgender people. The law was quickly appealed in 2017 and settled in federal court in 2019, but the state ended up losing hundreds of millions of dollars as the NBA All-Star Game and NCAA events were moved out of state. 

Follow OCJ Reporter Megan Henry on X.