WA Conservatives File Anti-Transgender Ballot Initiative
Working with the egregiously anti-gay Family Policy Institute of Washington (FPIW), the “Just Want Privacy” coalition just filed a ballot initiative seeking to codify discrimination against transgender people across the state of Washington. The initiative would have the effect of not only overturning existing transgender protections but also codifying targeted discrimination against the trans community.
Zack Ford at ThinkProgress summarized the massive state law changes:
- Declares “null and void and of no effect” the Human Rights Commission’s rules guaranteeing bathroom access for transgender people.
- Bans the Human Rights Commission from ever adopting rules related to gender identity in sex-segregated facilities.
- Clarifies that the state’s nondiscrimination laws still allow restrooms and locker rooms to be designated “for the exclusive use by biological male persons only or biological female persons only” and that no others (i.e. transgender people) are guaranteed such access.
- Preempts municipalities from passing their own bathroom protections for transgender people.
- Prohibits transgender students from accessing sex-segregated bathrooms in schools, only allowing them to access to “single-stall bathrooms, uni-sex bathrooms, or controlled use of faculty bathrooms, locker rooms, or shower rooms.”.
- Allows students to sue schools for $2,500 “for each instance in which they encountered a person of the opposite sex while accessing a public school student restroom, locker room, or shower room designated for use by the aggrieved students’ sex,” as well as monetary damages “from the offending public school for all psychological, emotional, and physical harm suffered.”
While South Dakota made history for passing (and having vetoed) the first statewide legislative ban on transgender protections, this would mark the first voter initiative to legally discriminate against the transgender community. Just as the Supreme Court (eventually) found that such laws targeting people for discrimination based on sexual orientation were unconstitutional, conservatives in Washington state appear hell-bent on wasting thousands in taxpayer dollars to begin the next round of targeting discrimination against a historically disenfranchised group.
The anti-trans ballot initiative’s primary target is the state non-discrimination law passed in 2006 that covered transgender people. It wasn’t until this past December that transgender protections became a hot button issue beginning a vicious cycle of conservative attacks in media and through the legislative process.
The newest effort to harm the transgender community in Washington isn’t a grassroots effort; rather, it’s supported by several national anti-gay organizations such as the Family Research Council (FRC), Focus on the Family, and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). That means the ballot initiative will be well-funded and well advertised leading all the way up to the vote.
In fact, the fear mongering has already begun.
Referring to the incident where a heterosexual, cisgender white male entered a women’s locker room recently in an attempt to argue that sexual predators could enter legally into any women’s restroom or locker room, ADF counsel Samuel Green wrote an op-ed in the Seattle Times misconstruing the facts if the case to make it seem as if the law protecting transgender men and women actually enabled a man to enter a women’s locker room.
In the op-ed Green claimed the Seattle Parks and Recreation said, “the man would not have been asked to leave if he had simply verbally identified as a woman.” The truth is, he could not have merely said he was a woman as he neither visibly nor verbally appeared to be transgender – something the Washington Human Rights Commission already clarified long before Green penned his screed.
In the memo the commission issued well before his op-ed – a memo he literally had to pretend didn’t exist in order to make his attack on the transgender community anything but hate speech – The Human Rights Commission said the man was not only in the wrong, but could be arrested for future attempts at entering women’s facilities. The commission went on to encourage facilities like the pool to challenge anyone that does not visibly or verbally appear to be transgender. The law already has a mechanism in place for instances where a person who identifies as transgender can file a grievance in such instances where actual discrimination occurs.
Green’s op-ed plays on the fictional stereotype that transgender protection laws encourage sexual predators to prey on women and children in locker rooms and bathrooms. In all the years where trans protections have been on the books, not once case of sexual abuse using the law as a shield has been recorded. In fact, should a predator attempt to use a transgender protections law as legal justification for committing a sex crime, he or she would be arrested and prosecuted just as quickly as an area lacking such trans protections.
To qualify their petition to appear on the state ballot, “Just Want Privacy” must collect at least 246,372 signatures by July 8, 2016. Between now and then expect a lot more lies and conservative fear mongering similar to the campaign waged against the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO).
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Tim Peacock is the Managing Editor and founder of Peacock Panache and has worked as a civil rights advocate for over twenty years. During that time he’s worn several hats including leading on campus LGBT advocacy in the University of Missouri campus system, interning with the Colorado Civil Rights Division, and volunteering at advocacy organizations. You can learn more about him at his personal website.
