By: Mary Steurer (ND Monitor)
The North Dakota Senate voted 40-7 on Thursday to pass a bill that prevents K-12 public schools from having all-gender bathrooms.
House Bill 1144 also allows schools to be investigated by the North Attorney General’s Office and fined up to $2,500 by courts for non-compliance.
Lawmakers previously enacted gender-related bathroom restrictions for public schools in 2023. That law prevents transgender students from using bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender.
Supporters of House Bill 1144 say the 2023 law didn’t go far enough.
Sponsor Rep. Bill Tveit, R-Hazen, expressed concerns schools won’t observe the policy without a formal enforcement mechanism.
Senators on Thursday approved amendments removing language forbidding single-occupancy all-gender restrooms, as well as a provision that stated that male and female restrooms could not share a communal sink or entry area. They also removed an exemption for certain schools and language stating concerns about non-compliant schools would have to be submitted to the state by parents.
The bill passed with little discussion from lawmakers.
Critics of the proposal have previously said the policy is attempting to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.
“The concerns in our schools about what’s going on in the bathrooms has very little to do with most of the testimony that has been shared so far this morning,” West Fargo Public Schools Business Manager Levi Bachmeier said at a March hearing on the bill.
Opponents also said the policy would pose a unique harm to transgender children. Some parents and school staff said access to safe bathrooms is already a significant obstacle for many transgender youth, and that banning all-gender restrooms would make this even more difficult.
The House passed House Bill 1144 in February with more than 80% support.'
Also Thursday, the Senate voted 41-6 to approve House Bill 1181, which amends Century Code to state “words used to reference an individual’s gender mean the individual’s sex.”
Sponsor SuAnn Olson, R-Baldwin, has called the proposal a “common sense” bill that is “scientifically honest.”
She said it was prompted in part by an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in January establishing a two-gender policy for the federal government.
Opponents of the bill raised concerns that it would discriminate against transgender and intersex North Dakotans.
Previously, the bill required all state-funded entities to refer to people by their sex determined at birth in all “policies, records, forms, rules, standards, procedures, guides, materials, instruction, training, correspondence, advertising, or marketing used by a public school, an institution under the control of the state board of higher education, or a state agency or office, unless otherwise required by federal law.”
The Senate Education Committee voted to remove this language because members felt it was confusing, Sen. Todd Beard, R-Williston, said on the floor.
He said the Century Code doesn’t usually state what kinds of forms or other legal documents definitions must apply to.
Since the bills were amended, they will go back to the House for concurrence votes.
