By KATIE BRANDENBURG

A Butler County state senator has filed legislation that would prevent transgender students from using locker room and restroom facilities designated for the sex that they identify as and instead requires them to use facilities designated for their biological sex or seek other accommodations.

The Kentucky Student Privacy Act was filed last week by Sen. C.B. Embry Jr., R-Morgantown. If approved, Senate Bill 76 would require every school restroom, locker room and shower room designated for use by multiple students to be designated and used by either male only or female only students.

It would allow transgender students to request other accommodations with written consent of a parent or legal guardian. However, that accommodation is not permitted to include use of facilities designated for or used by the opposite biological sex while other students could be present.

It would also allow students who encounter a person of the opposite biological sex in a restroom, locker room or shower room to recover $2,500 damages for psychological, emotional and physical harm suffered and reasonable attorney fees and costs from the school if school personnel gave permission for the student encountered to use the facility or failed to take reasonable steps to prohibit the person encountered from using the facility.

Embry said he filed the legislation on behalf of the Family Foundation of Kentucky in response to a high school in Louisville that approved a policy allowing students to use the restroom and locker room of their sexual identity.

The Courier-Journal reported in June that the Atherton High School school-based decision making council voted 8-1 in favor of the policy.

Embry said there are parents who don’t approve of the policy.

“I admit that if my daughters were in high school, I wouldn’t be greatly thrilled if they allowed boys to use the restroom with them just because they dress a certain way,” he said.

The policy creates an uneasy and embarrassing situation for some students, Embry said.

“This isn’t anything, in my opinion, against those people,” he said. “They have the right to dress and present themselves in any way they wish.”

The legislation would create a policy on the state-level that is being decided on school level, while Embry in the past has said that “I think the government closest to the people is the best.”

However, he said in this case, the decision of school officials might be different from the majority of opinions of parents at that school.

Thomas Aberli, principal of Atherton High School, said the policy was approved by the school-based decision making council and upheld through an appeal process.

“The majority of our community has been very supportive of the handling and the enforcement of this issue,” he said.

Aberli said he doesn’t want to diminish people’s concerns about the issue and has taken time to talk to people about their concerns.

However, he said that there haven’t been major problems in implementing the policy.

“It’s a non-issue in this school,” Aberli said.

Chris Hartman, director of the Kentucky Fairness Campaign, said the bill that Embry has filed is “a solution in search of a problem” at a time when the General Assembly has many more pressing issues to address.

“It’s sort of a fruitless effort to give him an opportunity to soapbox on something,” he said.

The focus, instead should be on protecting marginalized students through an anti-bullying bill with a strong suicide prevention element, he said.

“We don’t see any reason to further mandate micromanage decisions being quite capably handled by each school,” he said.

Feeling unsafe in school has had an impact on the high rate of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students who attempt suicide, Hartman said.

Hartman said Embry’s bill could actually have the effect of endangering students and potentially increasing instances of bullying for transgender students.

“Anything that draws more and more attention and scrutiny to someone who is different naturally makes them feel more different,” he said.

Kent Ostrander, executive director of the Family Foundation of Kentucky, said there’s no reason, for example, for a 17-year-old boy struggling with his identity to be allowed to use the same bathroom as a 14-year-old girl.

“It’s really common sense,” he said of the bill. “It is a good thing to be sensitive to students that are struggling with their identity, but that sensitivity for those few students should not abrogate every other student’s right of privacy.”

Ostrander said he has heard from an attorney representing parents who disagree with the policy that Atherton High School put into place.

He said his organization doesn’t think the legislation could lead to more bullying of transgender students.

“We’re more concerned about the bullying that would result from a biological boy going into a woman’s bathroom,” he said.

Joe Tinius, superintendent of Bowling Green Independent School District, said he understands the concerns that led to SB 76 being filed, but that individual school districts are able to work with students and their families to handle unique situations better than if those situations are handled on a state level.

“I tend to think that working through issues such as this are better handled on the local level,” he said.

Tinius said the bill also might create unintended consequences. For example, the bill mentions schools taking “reasonable steps” to prevent students from using facilities opposite of their biological sex, but doesn’t define what that means.

He said if the bill were to pass it might be difficult to implement.