Dana Ferguson reports that Jack Heyd of Box Elder plans to follow through with his plan to petition an anti-transgender potty bill onto the 2018 ballot. Ferguson reports that Heyd has submitted two drafts to the Legislative Research Council and plans to petition the “narrower of the two measures.”
Read Heyd’s first draft from November 2016 here; read Heyd’s second draft from February 2017 here. I’m not sure the second draft is significantly narrower than the first. Both drafts define “biological sex” as determined at birth by anatomy (draft #1 mentions chromosomes; draft #2 mentions genetics). The second draft emphasizes that biological sex is “immutable” and designates a person’s original birth certificate as “definitive evidence of the person’s biological sex.”
Both drafts forbid transgender students from using the school locker room, restroom, or changing facility of their choice. Both drafts prohibit local school boards from accommodating transgender students by allowing them to use the shared facilities that correspond to their gender identification. The first draft requires that schools provide transgender students with “reasonable accommodation”; the second draft backs away from that guarantee, saying nothing in the initiative prohibits public schools from providing accommodations.
The second draft does clarify that lady janitors can clean the boys’ room, male plumbers can go work on the girls’ showers, and anyone of any sex can rush in to render medical assistance or “to prevent a serious threat to good order or safety during a natural disaster or emergency.”
Heyd doesn’t have his Attorney General’s explanation or the Secretary of State’s go-ahead to circulate draft #2 yet. But watch for those petitions… and be ready not to sign them. Let’s keep potty panic and the culture war off the 2018 ballot.
Keeping potty panic and the culture war off the 2018 South Dakota ballot isn’t possible.
If it weren’t for potty panic and culture wars, only 40% of South Dakota Republicans would turnout in General Elections. Big money says potty panic is good; therefore South Dakota will cave in to awesome graphics embedded in prolific professional advertising messages.
Is Big Money behind Heyd, or is he a lone wolf?
Somehow culture war didn’t manifest itself in the last cycle’s ballot measures—I’m not convinced it will make it there this time. SDRTL gets enough culture-war play just by shouting abortion at Democrats.
if biological sex is: “immutable”, what about Hermaphrodites?