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A proposal to make transgender students use the bathroom of their birth sex is back on track in the state House of Representatives, after its sponsor added an amendment that she says strikes a balance between privacy, safety and students rights.
Two weeks after a House education committee recommended House Bill 2414 be held for study over the summer — seemingly killing it for the year — state Rep. Susan Lynn has made a change that appears to have revived it.
The Mt. Juliet Republican still says boys should use boys' rooms and girls should use girls'. But, she now adds, students should be able to appeal.
"That's fair to everybody. And, actually, it's probably much safer for anybody who might be transgender."
Safer, Lynn says, because it would give schools a chance to work with students to find the right accommodation, likely a unisex or faculty restroom.
That amendment isn't the only thing swaying lawmakers. They've come under intense criticism from conservative activists for bottling up the bathroom bill.
Memphis Rep. Mark White, a Republican, says hours after he recommended sending the measure to summer study, he began hearing complaints from constituents, including members of his church, Bellevue Baptist.
White laid the blame squarely on the Family Action Council of Tennessee. The organization's leader, former state lawmaker David Fowler, said he simply informed members of his group how lawmakers had voted.
Other lawmakers said they were upset at the ACLU for getting involved in a transgender student's case in Sumner County. One read from a letter sent in early March by an ACLU attorney to school officials raising the possibility of legal action if they didn't do more to accommodate the student's needs.
Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU's Tennessee chapter, says the letter was not a threat. It was meant only to bring school officials to the table to discuss the situation. Litigation, she says, would have been a last resort.
The pressure and the new amendment didn't lead White to change his vote. But others did, including state Rep. Rick Womick, R-Rockvale. The House Education Administration and Planning Committee voted 8-4 to move ahead with the legislation.
Chris Sanders of the Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBT rights group, says the changes fall short. Lynn's amendment requires transgender students to approach administrators and out themselves, when they simply want to go to the bathroom.
"Let's say you start a new school in your new gender identity. You don't want everybody knowing."
Sanders also predicts the amendment won't stop the criticism piling up from businesses.
On Wednesday, five Tennessee companies signed a letter from the Human Rights Campaign, another LGBT group. They say the bathroom bill smacks of discrimination and will make it harder for them to recruit talented employees.
"This is not a direction in which states move when they are seeking to provide successful, thriving hubs for business and economic development," they wrote.
The companies urged Republican leaders to stop the measure.
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