A decade of hate: How trans activists pressured Gov. Dennis Daugaard to veto HB 1008 in 2016

Editor’s note: This is the second article in a series of six exploring South Dakota’s last decade of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, “A decade of hate.” Stay with the Argus Leader in the coming days for the third, fourth, fifth and sixth articles in this series.

This article also mentions suicide. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for those in crisis. To speak with a certified listener, call 988. The Trevor Project is also the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ youth. For help, call 1-866-488-7386.

It was Feb. 23, 2016.

House Bill 1008, which would restrict trans people from accessing bathrooms that matched their gender identity, had just landed on Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s desk.

He had five business days to decide whether he would veto it.

Days earlier, he’d declared he’d never met a transgender person, and was ready to make his decision on the bill, still believing that would keep him objective to both sides and keep emotion from swaying him.

He was quickly proven wrong by Kendra Heathscott, who wrote in 2016 that as a child, she was placed into a Children’s Home Society day program where she met Daugaard, who was then the director of CHS. CHS is where she learned the word “transgender” and began to identify that way. In a letter to Daugaard posted by the Argus Leader, Heathscott shared her story of how she knew she was a girl growing up.

“I hope that you remember me and realize that you have known a trans person all along, and that I loved your stories and the positive energy you always had so much of,” Heathscott said. “The genuine love and concern that you so freely shared back then helped to make a very difficult period of my life better.”

So that fateful February, Daugaard met with several trans individuals from all different walks of life from all corners of the state, including Heathscott, state employee Terri Bruce, a trans child and their parent who wanted to remain anonymous at that time, and then-Lincoln High School student Thomas Lewis.

Their conversation, paired with pressure from trans celebrities like Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner to veto the bill, contentious protests at legislative coffees and the potential for a tourism boycott of the entire state of South Dakota, steered Daugaard straight into vetoing the bill.

"It helped me see things through their eyes a little better and see more of their perspective," Daugaard said at the time.

That historic veto came years before another similar veto, shielding the rights of LGBTQ+ people: Gov. Kristi Noem’s decision on HB 1217 in 2021, which would’ve limited trans girls and women from competing on girls’ and womens’ sports teams. Although she vetoed the bill that year, she passed a similar bill, SB 46, in 2022.

More: A decade of hate: How South Dakota's anti-LGBTQ+ bills have grown in the last 10 years

All of these bills are part of a pattern of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation introduced in South Dakota during the last decade, creating what those who are part of the queer community have deemed as a decade of hate.

Here’s how trans advocates and their allies swarmed to pressure Daugaard into vetoing the bill, and how people like Lewis are ready to do something like that again in the future, if necessary.

Trans people aren’t ‘political pawns’

Lewis, a Lincoln High School senior at the time, had been shunned out of both the men’s and women’s restrooms because of his identity as a trans male, he said. He used to wait until open lunch breaks to relieve himself at home, holding it for hours and causing discomfort in the classroom.

“This is a bill that’s almost like segregation,” Lewis said at the time. “We are taking away someone’s fundamental rights because the government says it’s a good idea.”

He recalled in an interview on June 13 with the Argus Leader how he first became involved in the LGBTQ+ community through a youth pride event he helped organize. The event was hosted by the local Center for Equality, and became the moment he said he “accidentally” came out in front of 300 people.

After that, he was asked by organizers with the ACLU and the local Center for Equality to speak at a press conference about his experience as a trans student as the bathroom bill passed through the South Dakota House. That press conference was how he came out to most of his extended family members.

The ACLU brought Lewis out to Pierre to testify before the Senate education committee on Feb. 11, 2016. The night before that, Lewis said the ACLU organized for him to have dinner with Sen. Deb Soholt (R-Sioux Falls), chair of the committee, who later said at a legislative coffee she voted against the bill because “it was the students of South Dakota that really convinced me.”

Related: A decade of hate: How South Dakota's gender-affirming care ban is affecting this family

Lewis recalled that as he spoke before the committee, he was genuinely scared about what could happen.

“I was so terrified because I was looking at all these adults, and I could tell that none of them could fully grasp the fear that I had,” Lewis said. “From there, I just told them to be considerate and walk a mile in my shoes. Obviously as high schoolers, there are other things to worry about — your grades, who you’re going to ask to prom, (acne). I shouldn’t have to worry about how I’m going to go to the bathroom (or) being attacked by the student body for my gender identity.”

Later, in the meeting with Daugaard, Lewis said he and his fellow trans siblings were able to prove to Daugaard that “we weren’t just a political pawn, we were people.”

He said he remembers feeling impressed Daugaard listened to the group, asked them questions and valued the conversation.

“When he finally vetoed the bill, there was the understanding that this isn’t an issue, at all,” Lewis said, calling the veto one of the biggest accomplishments in his life. “That was amazing to see, especially with how many lawmakers we’d seen at the time who (thought) this is the biggest issue we have.”

‘We are not a virus. We are human beings.’

Terri Bruce, a Rapid City resident who worked for the South Dakota State Historical Society Archaeological Research Center as a GIS coordinator for 13 years, was also present for the meeting with Daugaard and members of the trans community. Bruce testified against HB 1008 and a bill limiting trans sports participation, HB 1112, that year.

After HB 1008 was defeated, he told the Argus Leader “we have started the conversation about what it means to be transgender.”

“We can keep having that conversation,” he said. “We are not a virus. We are human beings.”

He later sued the state over the legality of a provision in the state health plan that he said barred him from getting a mastectomy, a form of gender-affirming care, in 2017. He died of suicide in 2018 before his case was heard.

Libby Skarin, campaigns director for the ACLU of South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming, met Bruce through her lobbyist work at the Capitol and later spoke at Bruce’s funeral. She remembers him as a great advocate for his community and someone driven to make things better.

“When someone who you see as a champion and a really strong advocate and a really strong person, when you see the effects of transphobia manifesting in that way, I feel comfortable saying he died because of transphobia,” Skarin said. “When that happens to someone who’s a champion, leader and really strong person, it’s a tragedy.

“I wish he was still here,” she added. “You shouldn’t have to have these memorials and mementos of the cost of transphobia and what happens to real people.”

Heathscott didn’t respond to an Argus Leader request to be interviewed for this story, but spoke to the Argus Leader multiple times in 2016 about how the legislation affected her.

Other informal, closed-door meetings besides the one with Daugaard also took place in Pierre in 2016 to dissuade lawmakers from voting on the bill. Miranda Gohn, a trans woman who grew up in the Aberdeen area, met privately with a group of legislators in Pierre that session and provided her own perspective on the issue.

Protests and boycotts

As HB 1008 progressed through committees and chambers in the Capitol, so did its opposition both within and beyond the statehouse.

Opponents of the bill took over a South Dakota tourism hashtag, #HiFromSD, on social media with messages of support for trans youth and opposition to the law. Some tourists threatened to cancel their trips to the Mount Rushmore state if Daugaard didn’t veto the bill.

Both the South Dakota and Sioux Falls Chambers of Commerce opposed HB 1008, as did Lutheran Bishop David Zellmer.

It was also revealed the NCAA was keeping tabs on the South Dakota situation because it was set to hold its Division I women’s basketball regional finals at the Denny Sanford Premier Center, and seven Division II national championships between then and 2018.

There also came growing local and national coverage of the bill and its potential ramifications, with Lewis himself being featured alongside the issue everywhere from the New York Times and the Washington Post to CNN and the Guardian.

Lewis’ image was also used in a Federalist article declaring that “South Dakota stands up to the transgender mafia,” which Lewis took offense to, but who also found it humorous and began to call himself the “don of the transgender mafia.”

“It just seemed like a good way to reclaim everything,” he said.

Daugaard ultimately vetoed the bill March 1, 2016, stating the bill didn’t address any pressing issue concerning the school districts of South Dakota and that local school districts can, and have, made necessary decisions on this issue.

What’s changed since 2016?

The other big LGBTQ+ bill veto in the last decade was a style-and-form veto of sports bill HB 1217 by Gov. Kristi Noem in 2021.

Noem said at the time that after consulting with attorneys, she was concerned the bill’s vague and overly broad language could have significant unintended consequences.

“Overall, these style and form clarifications protect women’s sports while also showing empathy for youths struggling with what they understand to be their gender identity," Noem wrote at the time.

More: Gov. Kristi Noem won't sign transgender sports bill

The Legislature failed to override her veto. Many criticized her veto, and she faced blowback from conservatives and right-wing news outlets for not coming out tougher on the topic by passing the bill as it was written.

But Noem, who has said she has family and friends who are transgender, came back in full force in 2022 with a similar bill, SB 46, which was introduced by the State Affairs Committee at the request of the Governor’s Office.

After the legislation flew through both chambers, Noem said in a press conference shortly after she signed it that she would justify the legislation by emphasizing "this bill is about fairness."

"It's about allowing biological females and their sex to compete fairly on a level playing field that gives them opportunities for success," she said.

More: Gov. Kristi Noem signs 'fairness' bill, limiting transgender athletes' access to sports

Dave Zimbeck, who once lobbied on behalf of the Sioux Falls Sports Authority against HB 1217, said in his personal opinion, he believes SB 46 passed because “the culture warriors in the Republican Party had a stronger hand, and ultimately, the governor took a lot of heat from the folks on her right in 2021 for vetoing the bill.”

During the past few years in South Dakota, there’s been less of a willingness from elected officials to meet with trans people, and more of a willingness to support legislation that harms them, Skarin explained.

“(They) can’t plausibly say they haven’t had an opportunity to meet with trans constituents, or (that they) haven’t had an opportunity to learn and understand,” she said.

Rep. Linda Duba (D-Sioux Falls) said she believes more elected officials should take the time to sit down and meet with trans people who could be affected by legislation like this, as was the case in 2016.

“What I want is a state where we welcome all people,” Duba said. “In the current regime, we aren’t welcoming at all. It spills over into the schools and into the universities, based on the things the governor is saying. That’s not a welcoming state.”

Lewis said in some respects South Dakota hasn’t changed because the state is still dealing with many of the same issues he faced as he was starting out in his advocacy work in high school.

With this in mind, Lewis said he has one big goal for the year.

“I want to be able to go to Pierre again and say that I made it,” he said. “Despite all this crap you’ve decided to throw at trans people, I’m still here.”

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: How trans activists pressured Gov. Dennis Daugaard to veto HB 1008