Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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Perversely inspired by the Texas law that established a bounty system for reporting abortions, Republican lawmakers in South Dakota are pursuing a similarly structured bill that would target transgender students in the state’s K-12 schools.
It’s a morally reprehensible bit of legislation that financially incentivizes non-trans students to report instances of their trans schoolmates using bathrooms, locker rooms and similar facilities that don’t correspond to the trans students’ birth gender. As with Texas’ near-total abortion ban, the bill would allow students who report violations to recover damages, court costs and attorney’s fees in civil court.
We remain convinced even a far-right dominated Supreme Court will strike down the shocking legal manipulations — using state civil procedures to deny bedrock civil rights — but the intentions behind this legal vandalism could hardly be clearer or more repellent. And the South Dakota bill is not the only one of its type. NBC News reported that GOP lawmakers introduced at least nine anti-trans bills in seven states through the first week of 2022. Not all of those bills go as far as South Dakota’s, but the common denominator among them is an endemic strain of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination among Republican leadership.
We saw this in action last year when more than 250 anti-trans bills were introduced across several states, which prompted the Human Rights Campaign to label 2021 as “the worst year in recent history for LGBTQ+ state legislative attacks.” Those bills involved bans on sports participation and use of certain facilities, as well as religious exemptions that legalized discrimination based on sexual orientation, and several of them were enacted in states like Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Montana and West Virginia.
Now comes a second wave of anti-trans legislation, which equal-rights advocates fear could be more ugly than the last after GOP legislative leaders became emboldened by the Texas abortion law.
“Unfortunately, I think we’re getting ready to watch a race to the bottom among legislators who are in a competition to see who can do the most harm to trans kids,” Gillian Branstetter, of the National Women’s Law Center, told NBC News. “It is a hostile and dangerous trend that I’m sure we’ll see continue through the year.”
Sadly, but not surprisingly, our children are being damaged by the GOP’s hatred. A poll by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization focused on suicide prevention among LGBTQ+ youth, found that two-thirds of these young people reported that debates on anti-trans measures had negatively affected their mental health. Among trans children, 4 out of 5 said their mental health had suffered amid the dialogue.
Meanwhile, violence against trans people of all ages hit record rates in each of the past two years, with 44 murders in 2020 and at least 50 in 2021.
Nevada, thank goodness, isn’t among the states where lawmakers are dismantling the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. Voters here are to thank for that — they elected state leaders who reflect Nevadans’ core belief that our state’s rich diversity is one of our key strengths. And that applies across the board, including sexual orientation.
But the attack on trans students elsewhere should serve as a reminder to all Americans, Nevadans included, that the GOP is a proven threat to the equal rights of a broad swath of our society. We see it in the restrictions on voting access that have been passed in several Republican-majority states that target minority communities. We see it in the Republican-fueled curtailment of the reproductive rights of women. We see it in the GOP’s vilification of immigrants from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
The GOP has become the party of white Christian male grievance and, worse, vengeance. They appear determined to force people to believe as they believe and to deny rights to anyone who is different from them.
Now, imagine what might come next if Republicans succeed in their attempt to subvert the nation’s voting structure and establish permanent minority rule. This isn’t some hypothetical possibility, but rather a concrete threat: In several states, GOP leaders have tilted the scales in their favor through gerrymandering, passage of balloting restrictions that limit the voting power of communities that traditionally oppose GOP candidates, and usurping the authority of bipartisan election officials to verify and confirm results of votes.
The voting-reform bill that is awaiting action by the U.S. Senate would provide protections against the Republicans’ efforts, and hopefully will be passed despite opposition from the GOP.
But regardless, Americans must think of the Republicans’ assault on equal rights when they vote in 2022 and beyond. Otherwise, we risk reverting to the days of legalized discrimination against anyone who isn’t part of the white male Christian power structure.
