After the Senate’s party line vote, the bill now awaits final approval from Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who in June said he’d sign the bill if it got to his desk. It will be effective 90 days thereafter.
The bill’s effect
Once enacted, the bill will require public and chartered nonpublic schools and all institutions of higher education to designate facilities for the “exclusive use of students of either the male biological sex or the female biological sex,” according to a nonpartisan analysis of the bill.
Schools will then be prohibited from knowingly permitting transgender girls from using the designated girls bathroom and transgender boys from using the designated boys bathroom. It allows students to prove their biological sex using their birth certificates.
S.B. 104 also forbids schools from creating specifically gender-neutral, multi-occupancy facilities, though it does allow single-occupancy gender-neutral bathrooms and facilities.
This portion of the bill, dubbed the “Protect All Students Act,” will also bar transgender girls from sharing overnight accommodations with cisgender girls, and vice versa.
Dayton-area state Sen. Niraj Antani, R-Miami Twp., was among those who voted in support of the bill.
“This is common sense policy that will ensure the safety and security of our school children. No young girl should be forced to go into the same restroom with a biological male,” Antani said in a statement after the vote.
Local reactions
Brendan Shea, an Ohio Board of Education member for District 5, which includes Greene County, testified in favor of the bill in late 2023. He argued that a transgender bathroom bill would help safeguard parents’ rights, children’s innocence, and the rights, privacy, safety and opportunities of women and girls in schools and athletics.
“If we teach children that the world should conform to their subjective identity or preference, they’ll become bitter and miserable and never live up to their God-given potential,” Shea told the Ohio House Higher Education Committee in October 2023. “Fairness — whether fair treatment under the law or in the classroom — is treatment that comports with objective reality and facts.”
Shea did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday regarding the bill’s passage.
Dayton Public Schools board member Jocelyn Rhynard, who is the parent of a transgender kid, said this bill would hurt Ohioans.
“To see extremists in the statehouse vote again for discrimination and targeting real people who just want to live their lives is deeply, deeply disappointing,” Rhynard said. “These lawmakers should be focused on making our community stronger, on addressing real issues, instead of chasing the latest fear-mongering non-issue.”
She predicted the law would be immediately challenged in Ohio’s courts and said lawmakers who voted for the bill ignored testimony from medical, educational and religious organizations who said this bill was unnecessary and harmful.
“To other parents, to all the trans kids and trans adults, just know we will continue to fight with you and for you, and continue living proudly,” Rhynard said.
Statehouse debate
Debate on the Senate floor saw little common ground.
Democrats framed the bill as a solution to a made-up problem and one that punches down on an already-marginalized community of transgender students. Republicans framed it as a common-sense solution that is widely popular among voters.
“Ohioans and Americans, quite frankly, across this country don’t want boys in girls’ sports,” said Sen. Kristina Roegner, R-Hudson. “They don’t want boys in girls’ locker rooms. They don’t want boys in girls’ bathrooms. It’s for the safety of their kids, and this message was sent loud and clear last week during the national election. I say, ‘Listen.’”
Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said Wednesday that “70-to-75 percent of the public agree with this issue, agree with the bill we had.”
Much of the Democratic caucus lamented the fact that the ban was folded into a bipartisan bill originally meant to expand the access and effectiveness of Ohio’s College Credit Plus program, which gives students an opportunity for a head start in college.
“We’re ruining a good, bipartisan bill that had my name on it as well by adding hateful, toxic amendments,” said Sen. Bill DeMora, D-Columbus. “This bill will create suspicion and paranoia and fear that will affect both children and adults.”
Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, pushed back on the idea that the ban is mean-spirited or hateful. “This bill is offered with no animus towards students who are experiencing gender issues,” he said.
But an array of transgender advocates set up at the Ohio Statehouse Wednesday to raise concerns that the bathroom bill would result in increased bullying and the loss of current and future educators, and further exacerbate mental health struggles common among transgender youth.
Huffman, when asked to square his caucus’ views of S.B. 104′s benefits with the transgender community’s concerns, told this news outlet that not every transgender Ohioan will hold the same opinion about the bill.
“Some folks, they’re going to be very concerned about it. Some folks, it’s not going to impact their life at all,” Huffman said, later adding that transgender bathroom restrictions in schools is “an issue that seems common sense to most folks.”
Larger LGBTQ+ debate
One transgender man, Leo Duru, told reporters Wednesday that the bathroom ban will put “passing” transgender students at unique risk of perturbing other students in the bathroom.
“Being seen in a bathroom where it doesn’t look like you belong puts transgender students in danger,” said Duru, a college student from Zanesville.
Duru referenced the story of Noah Ruiz, a transgender man from Oxford who was allegedly assaulted while using a Preble County campground women’s restroom in 2022. Ruiz claimed that he was called homophobic slurs by his assailants.
The Preble County Prosecutor’s Office confirmed Wednesday that the man who allegedly assaulted Ruiz, Darryl Sorrell, was charged with assault but pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. Ruiz also pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and a charge of obstruction against him was dropped.
Duru also questioned the bill’s reach when it comes to age. “As a 21-year-old trans man, I can’t believe adult students would be subjected to restroom policies decided by politicians,” he said.
With its passage, S.B. 104 becomes the third major measure passed by the 135th General Assembly that has honed in on transgender issues.
Already passed were initiatives blocking gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors and blocking transgender girls from participating in girls scholastic sports, which was so popular within the party that the Republican supermajority in both chambers overrode Gov. Mike DeWine’s decision to veto the measures.
Last on the plate is House Bill 8, a measure intended to keep parents clued in to their child’s mental health and demeanor at school that LGBTQ+ advocates have warned will effectively work as a “forced outing” mandate for LGBTQ+ students who are not out at home. Huffman said the bill is still a priority for his caucus before the legislative session ends at the end of the year.
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Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
