ROCK HILL, S.C. — South Carolina’s controversial school bathroom law is now in effect. It was slipped into the state budget and requires students to use bathrooms based on their biological sex.
A couple of months ago, lawmakers were working on this legislation in the South Carolina State House. At the same time, a Rock Hill School Board member created a bathroom policy for the district with the same wording.
The budget proviso is state law as of July 1, and other districts will have to follow in Rock Hill's footsteps to keep vital state funding.
The Rock Hill School Board passed its district bathroom policy on Thursday with a 4-2 vote. Initially, the board was seeking legal advice on whether it could pass a bathroom policy since federal regulations enacted by the Biden administration ban it.
However, now that the proviso is in effect, board chair Helena Miller said the board moved forward to comply with state law. Any district that doesn't will be at risk of losing money from the state.
Miller said the district policy is temporary, like the state law. Since it’s a budget proviso, it can only last for the current fiscal year.
"We don't know what the legislature is going to do over the coming year," Miller said. "There may be a bill proposed to make this permanent law; we've seen that with other things."
Several red states have these bathroom laws, which are widely opposed by LGBTQIA+ advocates.
"I think it's so unfortunate that we're focused on stuff like this when really what trans youth in our schools need is mental health support, they need access to the community, they need resources," Ivy Hill, the director of gender justice with the Campaign for Southern Equality, said.
Hill wants transgender students to know they are not alone.
"These bills send a really terrible message to you trying to tell you that you're less than human, that you don't deserve the same access to public space as anybody else, and that is absolutely not true," Hill said.
When WCNC Charlotte's Julia Kauffman asked Miller why it was important to her to pass the bathroom policy, she said:
"Most of the discussion and the concerns that we've heard is coming from a standpoint of privacy concerns and safety and security."
Several state attorneys general, including South Carolina's Alan Wilson, are challenging the federal regulations that ban the bathroom policies in court.
"If there are legal challenges on the proviso that is for the state legislature to deal with, quite frankly. We have to make sure that we still get our funding following today," Miller said.
Miller predicts the South Carolina School Boards Association will send out a model policy soon for all school boards to adopt regarding bathroom use.
Contact Julia Kauffman at jkauffman@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.