Bathroom bill and parents’ bill of rights see recent movement in the Ohio Statehouse

COLUMBUS, Ohio — DECEMBER 13: Advocates for the trans community protest outside the Senate Chamber and repeatedly shouted “shame” when they heard that lawmakers had passed HB 68 that bans gender-affirming care for transgender youth and bars transgender kids from participating on sports teams, December 13, 2023, at the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)

Two anti-transgender bills have recently been moving through the Ohio legislature.  

House Bill 8 would force educators to out a student’s sexuality to their parents, require public schools to inform parents about sexuality content materials ahead of time and give them the option to request alternative instructions. The bill passed in the House over the summer and has had a few hearings in the Senate Education Committee — meaning it will likely be voted on soon. 

House Bill 183 would ban transgender students from using the bathroom and locker room that matches up with their gender identity. The bill was recently voted out of committee but hasn’t made its way to the House floor yet and doesn’t seem like it will anytime soon. 

“We haven’t formally discussed it and it won’t be on the floor next week,” said Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens, R-Kitts Hill.

The Ohio House has four more meetings scheduled in May and June before the lawmakers go on summer break. 

Having these bills go through the legislative process — even if they don’t pass — is damaging to the LGBTQ community, said Carson Hartlage, a member of the Board of TransOhio. 

“They’re both framed as attempts to protect students … but it doesn’t seem like these bills are actually fixing any real problems,” Hartlage said. “They’re really just creating really harmful conversations around trans kids and a lot of them don’t really seem all that practical or enforceable. … It just creates a spotlight where we don’t really need one and points out kids or individual schools or things like that don’t really need that kind of negative attention.”

Bathroom bills

Bradie Anderson, 14, is worried someone will police which bathroom she uses at school. 

“There’s no problem with her in the bathrooms,” Bradie’s mom Anne Anderson said. “There’s just not. They’re looking for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”

The Anderson family lives in Mentor, but they have considered moving because of the various anti-LGBTQ bills in the Statehouse. 

“People don’t want to stick around here,” Anderson said. 

Ten states have laws on the books that limit access to bathrooms that line up with gender identity in K-12 schools, according to the UCLA Williams Institute 2024 report on the impact of anti-transgender legislation on youth. An estimated 34,800 transgender students ages 13-17 live in those states. 

Those laws have been challenged in Florida, Oklahoma, Idaho and Tennessee. Seventeen states, including Ohio, have bathroom bill bans pending in the legislature.   

Ohio’s bill would also ban schools from allowing students to share overnight accommodations with the opposite sex, and it would prevent a school from having single-occupancy facilities. 

Parental bill of rights

Anderson worries about the LGBTQ students whose parents don’t support them. 

“Those are the kids that are going to be completely crushed by House Bill 8,” she said. “House Bill 8 would be very dangerous to children that want to keep a low profile and feel that they can trust someone in their school because they obviously don’t feel safe coming out to their parents, that’s the issue.”

There were 62 parental-rights bills in 24 states in 2023, according to FutureEd, an independent think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. 

Bills have been signed into law in Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and Louisiana. 

Ohio’s bill would prohibit any sexuality content from being taught to students in kindergarten through third grade. 

The bill defines sexuality content as “oral or written instruction, presentation, image, or description of sexual concepts or gender ideology.”

This story has been corrected to include the correct year of the parents’ rights bill tracker.

Follow OCJ Reporter Megan Henry on Twitter.

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