Proposals targeting trans students, revised versions of measures vetoed last year, advance in Legislature

Corrections & Clarifications: Samual Kahrs' name was misspelled in an earlier version of this article.

A legislative committee advanced three proposals targeting transgender youth on Wednesday.

All were sponsored by John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, and passed the Senate Education Committee on a party-line vote, with Democrats opposed.

Two bills were modified versions of legislation Kavanagh introduced last year and were vetoed by Gov. Katie Hobbs. The governor called them "harmful legislation directed at transgender youth" and said that she would veto anything that “aims to attack and harm children.”

The third proposal, a concurrent resolution, contained the same language as the bills Hobbs vetoed last year but, if passed, would bypass the governor and go before voters as a ballot measure in November.

During Wednesday's hearing, the proposals drew vigorous opposition from parents, advocates and transgender students, who called them dangerous and discriminatory and asked legislators to vote against them.

"I feel really tired and exhausted after years and years of having to ... defend my child's wellbeing and existence in this state," said Lizette Trujillo, who has a 16-year-old transgender son. "I really wish that these ... types of bills would stop."

Bills are directed at trans students' pronouns and facilities access

One of the bills, Senate Bill 1166, would require a public school to notify a student's parents if an employee starts to refer to them by a pronoun that differs from their sex assigned at birth or a name not listed on school records. It would also prohibit a school from requiring an employee to use a pronoun that differs from a student's sex assigned at birth if doing so is against their "religious or moral convictions."

Kavanagh described the bill as an attempt to protect students and respect parents' rights. Trans youth have higher suicide rates and rates of depression, he said, so parents should know if their child is transgender so they can "get psychiatric or psychological care" for their child. He said he thinks the "overwhelming majority of parents" would "embrace and love their children."

But several people who offered public comment — as well as some Democratic senators on the committee — rejected Kavanagh's assumption and said the bill would endanger transgender students. Christine Marsh, D-Phoenix, cited the fact that transgender youth are overrepresented in the homeless population. Gaelle Esposito, a lobbyist who spoke on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, shared a statistic from a 2022 survey by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that supports LGBTQ youth, that found that just 33% of LGBTQ youth in Arizona identified home as an "LGBTQ-affirming space."

Several transgender people said that coming out to their families was difficult and it should only be done on the terms of the person sharing their gender identity.

"How and when a transgender person comes out to people close to them is a deeply personal thing," said Erica Keppler, a trans woman. "It is usually done with great consideration of the other person's nature and of their relationship."

"I never told my parents, but when my brother told them, we never spoke again," Keppler said. "Thank God I was an adult at the time."

The other bill, Senate Bill 1182, would give students legal grounds to sue a public school if they encounter a "person of the opposite sex in a public school shower room." It would also require schools to provide single-occupancy showers to transgender students who do not want to use a multi-occupancy shower associated with their sex assigned at birth.

Kavanagh called a multi-occupancy shower the "most egregious area where modesty is violated." He described a multi-occupancy shower as one where students are standing naked next to each other.

Dawn Shim, a senior at Hamilton High School in Chandler, told the committee there aren't collective facilities in public schools as they think and said that rather than accomplishing anything substantive, the bill only "threatens young trans people."

Esposito said that it's already illegal to enter a locker room with the intent to harm someone else.

Resolution would put trans students' pronouns, facility access on ballot

The concurrent resolution, Senate Concurrent Resolution 1013, would take both of those issues a bit further.

Instead of requiring a school to notify parents when staff members use a transgender student's self-designated name and pronouns, it would require a school to first get parental permission. Instead of prohibiting transgender students from accessing multi-occupancy showers that align with their gender identity, it would do so for showers, locker rooms, bathrooms and rooms on overnight trips.

Samual Kahrs, a 17-year-old trans student, told the committee that it wasn't until his teachers "lovingly accepted" him that he was able to be accepted at home.

"I personally know students who feel unsafe at home identifying as themselves, and school is the only safe place where they can go by the name and pronouns that fit them," Kahrs said. "I remember the first day that my teachers called me by Samual, and it was the best day of my life. I am begging you to vote 'no' on this. I am begging you to just leave trans kids alone."

Before voting against the proposal, Marsh said she was fearful of the impact a ballot measure may have on transgender youth.

"When it's a Senate bill, I hope that there are not actually all that many of these young people across the state who even understand what's going on down here," she said. "I hope they are living their peaceful lives in their own communities."

But a concurrent resolution is different, she said.

"This will become a debate on a statewide level, harming God knows how many kids and forcing them into further isolation and harassment and bullying," she said. "I think that the effect of that will be incalculable."

All three legislative proposals passed the committee 4-3.

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The committee chair, Ken Bennett, R-Prescott, gave emotional testimony when explaining his vote in favor of SB 1166, saying that while he has "huge respect" for parental rights, he believes that one of the worst things you can do is to "offend a child."

Bennett said he would not support that bill or SB 1182 as they proceed through the Legislature unless there were significant changes but that he was voting for them to get them out of committee.

Madeleine Parrish covers K-12 education. Reach her at mparrish@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Proposals targeting transgender students advance in AZ Legislature