OKLAHOMA CITY (LifeSiteNews) – Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a law Wednesday that will require public schools and public charter schools to limit the use of sex-specific restrooms and locker rooms to individuals who actually match the facilities’ respective sexes.
SB 615 also requires schools to “provide a reasonable accommodation to any individual who does not wish to comply,” in the form of “access to a single-occupancy restroom or changing room.” Noncompliant school districts or charter schools “shall receive a five percent (5%) decrease in state funding for the school district or public charter school for the fiscal year following the year of noncompliance”; and parents in noncompliant schools “shall have a cause of action” against them. The law took effect immediately.
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Conservatives argue that forcing children and teens to share intimate facilities with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives potential male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers.
Last fall, public revolt over such policies fueled Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory over Democrat Terry McAuliffe for the governorship of Virginia as well as a GOP takeover of the Virginia House of Delegates, particularly due to the rape of a female student by a “transgender” classmate in a girls’ restroom in Loudoun County’s Stone Bridge High School.
In June 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a lower-court ruling that “trans” ex-student Gavin Grimm had a constitutional right to use male restrooms at Gloucester High School, also in Virginia, effectively letting stand a victory for “transgender” redefinition of federal nondiscrimination rules.
SB 615 is only the latest in a string of socially conservative laws recently enacted by the Sooner State. Other recent measures signed by Stitt include a ban on biological males participating in athletic teams expressly meant for female students, as well as two near-total abortion bans, one criminalizing abortion directly and the other empowering state residents to file civil suits against abortionists.
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