Bill restricting school bathroom use by transgender students passes Ohio Senate, awaits governor’s signature

The Ohio Senate on Wednesday greenlit a measure that would ban transgender students from using locker rooms and bathrooms associated with their gender identities.

Senate Bill 104 passed 24-7 on a party-line vote.

If signed into law by the state’s GOP governor, the Republican-backed legislation would require primary and secondary schools, as well as institutions of higher education, to designate separate bathrooms and changing areas for males or females based on gender assigned at or near birth. Multi-gendered facilities would be prohibited.

The ban would not apply to school employees, people with disabilities and children under 10 who need assistance from a family member or guardian, according to the legislation. Family restrooms and single-occupancy facilities are also permitted.

The bill, titled the “Protect All Students Act,” would amend Ohio’s existing college credit program for high school students. It is now awaiting approval from Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.

DeWine is inclined to sign it but will conduct a legal review first, the Associated Press reported. “We have no new comment,” DeWine spokesperson Dan Tierney told CNN on Thursday. “While the bill has passed, it has not been delivered to our office yet for signature.”

In 2023, DeWine vetoed a bill to ban gender-affirming surgery for transgender minors, but the veto was overridden by the legislature.

LGBTQ advocates have for years worked to combat similar “bathroom bills,” blasting them as an unnecessary and harmful attack on transgender students’ humanity.

“Senate Bill 104 is a cruel invasion of students’ rights to privacy, which could result in unwarranted governmental disclosures of private, personal information,” Jocelyn Rosnick, policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, said Wednesday.

Ohio’s Center for Christian Virtue is among some advocacy groups backing SB 104 and has urged DeWine to sign it.

“Today is a huge victory for children and families in Ohio,” said the group’s policy director David Mahan in a statement Wednesday, calling it “common-sense legislation.”

SB 104 is the first piece of legislation to pass following the November election, state Senate Democratic Leader Nickie Antonio said, adding she sees it as marginalizing students.

“I am in disbelief that this is a top priority on our first session back from recess,” said Antonio said in a statement Wednesday. “This bill is not about bathrooms. It’s about demonizing those who are different, and our children are watching and listening to the fearmongering.”

In 2023, Republican-led legislatures in several states passed similar bills in what the Human Rights Campaign – the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the US – slammed as the biggest year for “bathroom bills.”

“These bills will not accomplish anything other than to further alienate and stigmatize those already on the margins of life in this state,” the group’s state legislative director and senior counsel, Cathryn Oakley, said in a statement following legislation in Idaho passing in 2023.