BISMARCK, North Dakota (LifeSiteNews) — North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum announced Wednesday that he signed a law that makes the state’s college students and prisoners use bathrooms and locker rooms in accordance with their biological sex.
According to the provisions of H.B. 1473, jails, prisons, and public colleges must designate bathrooms, showers, locker rooms in a dormitory or living facility owned by the state board of higher education, as well as penitentiaries and correctional facilities for adults and youths, as “for use exclusively for males or exclusively for females.”
The legislation further requires special accommodations be given to students and prisoners “as deemed appropriate” by prison or college dorm staff. The law passed both houses of the North Dakota legislature with veto-proof majorities.
The bill follows a string of similar bills Burgum signed into law.
One bill, H.B. 1254, signed by Burgum last week, prohibits medical professionals from performing “castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, penectomy, phalloplasty, or vaginoplasty” on minors. It also prohibits a mastectomy and the administration of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
Two other bills, H.Bs. 1249 and 1489, protect women’s sports by prohibiting biological men from joining women’s sports in K-12 and collegiate settings and allow for women harmed by violations of the laws to sue for damages. Burgum vetoed a similar bill in 2021.
Burgum also vetoed a bill last month that would have prohibited teachers from using students’ “preferred” pronouns without parental consent, as well as offered protections for government workers from using the “preferred” pronouns of co-workers, as LifeSite previously reported. While the North Dakota Senate managed to garner enough votes in an attempt to override Burgum’s veto, the state House failed to do so.
H.B. 1473 is not the last gender ideology related bill that the North Dakota legislature sent to Burgum. Last week, the state House approved H.B. 1297, a bill that would prohibit people from changing birth records in the state based on gender identity, by a 79-11 margin. The following day, the state Senate passed the bill by a margin of 43-4.
North Dakota is not the only Republican controlled state to have a law restricting the use of bathrooms or locker rooms based on biological sex.
In March, Arkansas’s Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill barring members of public or charter schools from using facilities that do not align with their sex. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has likewise banned boys and girls from using facilities designated for the opposite sex, as has Idaho Gov. Brad Little.