CNN
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The Ohio Senate on Wednesday gave the green light to a measure that would ban transgender students from using locker rooms and bathrooms associated with their gender identity.
Senate Bill 104passed 24-7 on a party-line vote.
If the Republican-backed legislation were signed into law by the Republican governor, it would require elementary and secondary schools, as well as institutions of higher education, to designate separate bathrooms and locker rooms for men or women based on gender assigned at or around birth. . Multi-gender facilities would be banned.
Under the legislation, the ban would not apply to school staff, people with disabilities and children under the age of 10 who require assistance from a family member or guardian. Family toilets and single occupancy facilities are also permitted.
The bill, titled the “Protect All Students Act,” would amend Ohio’s law existing student loan program for high school students. It now awaits approval from Republican Gov. Mike DeWine is inclined to sign it but will first conduct a legal investigation, the Associated Press reported. CNN has contacted the governor’s office for comment.
LGBTQ advocates have worked for years to fight similar “bathroom bills,” labeling them as an unnecessary and harmful attack on the humanity of transgender students.
Ohio’s Center for Christian Virtue is one of several advocacy groups support the bill and urged DeWine to sign it.
“Today is a huge victory for children and families in Ohio,” the group’s policy director David Mahan said in a statement Wednesday, calling it “common sense legislation.”
Senate Bill 104 is the first piece of legislation to pass after the November election, Senate Democratic Leader Nickie Antonio said, adding that she sees it as marginalizing students.
“I don’t believe this will be a top priority in our first session after the break,” Antonio said in an interview statement Wednesday. “This bill is not about bathrooms. It is about demonizing those who are different, and our children are watching and listening to the fear mongering.”
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 – decried as the biggest year for “bathroom bills.”
“These bills will do nothing but further alienate and stigmatize those already on the margins of life in this state,” the group’s legislative director and senior adviser Cathryn Oakley said in a statement after legislation in Idaho over in 2023.