Amid a national surge of proposed, and passed, anti-trans legislation that targets the rights and lives of trans kids and their parents, the Alabama Senate has approved a law that will limit the rights of transgender youth and other LGBTQ + kids in the state.
One part of the bill is Alabama’s own version of Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” bill. Another is a bathroom ban that will require students to use the bathroom and locker room that corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth. The bill did not originally contain a “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” aspect, but it was added as a surprise, last-minute addendum the morning the bill was approved, April 7th, 2022.
Representative Scott Stadthagen, a Republican, said that the bathroom bill is not about transgender students, according to AL.com. Rather, he said that it is meant to protect female students because there have been cases of cisgender male students trying to access the girls’ bathroom. However, if this were truly the case, there is language that could have been used in the bill to protect both cisgender and transgender female students while allowing both to use the girls’ facilities.
Vanessa Finney, a parent of a transgender son in the state, complained that not only does the bill encroach on the rights of her child but also that the enforcement mechanism of the bill is suspect.
“How does the legislature propose that schools police students in using the restroom of their choice? Will there be a genitalia check at the door? ” she asked the Senate committee, AL.com reports.
The “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” addendum to the bill would prohibit the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through fifth grade. Because the bathroom bill had previously been passed by the House before the “Do Not Say Gay or Trans” addendum, it must return to the House for final approval, according to the Montgomery Advertiser. It would still need to be signed by Alabama Governor, Republican Kay Ivey, who last year signed a law banning trans kids from playing the sport that corresponded to their gender.
The Alabama House today is also considering a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for trans youth. If passed, the bill would make providing gender-affirming services to trans youth a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. This will have effects not just on trans youth from Alabama, but from across the South as many travel to receive gender-affirming care at the University of Alabama, Birmingham’s gender clinic.
“If passed and signed into law, Alabama will have the most deadly, sweeping, and hostile law targeting transgender people in the country,” Chase Strangio, deputy director for Trans Justice with the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, told NBC 15 News. “The way to reduce harm to trans youth is to provide them with gender-affirming health care where it is medically indicated. This bill takes that lifesaving treatment option off the table and makes it a felony. Moving forward with this bill will be deadly for trans youth, push doctors out of a state that has a shortage of medical providers, hurt Alabama’s economy, and subject the state to costly litigation. ”
