A group of high school students in Kentucky were invited to contribute to a piece of legislation that would allow students to have a say in the screening of new school superintendents, but their legislation, which passed the Democratically-controlled House, is now being held up in the state Senate for a terrible reason.
Republican state senators have effectively blocked the legislation by filing a series of amendments, the first of which is a transphobic amendment aimed at high school students.
"That's the way it works," said Republican Sen. C.B. Embry, who filed the first amendment, which would force transgender students to use separate bathrooms in public schools. That amendment had previously passed the Republican-controlled Senate but died in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.
"The ball is in the House's court. If it doesn't (pass), it's not my fault, it's theirs for not giving it a hearing or allowing it to go to a conference committee," he said.
The AP's description of Embry's craven political maneuver doesn't do the story justice. It's much worse than that.
Senator Embry first introduced the horrible idea in January and it would go beyond merely mandating that transgender students use separate bathrooms. It would also punish schools who choose not to discriminate.
via ThinkProgress
Sen. C.B. Embry Jr. (R) has introduced what he calls the Kentucky Student Privacy Act (SB 76), which would force all students to be identified by their “biological sex” as determined by their chromosomes and what was assigned to them according to their anatomy at birth, essentially erasing transgender students. The bill requires that bathrooms and locker rooms must be divided according to “biological sex,” and schools are forbidden from accommodating transgender students by allowing them access to any facility “designated for use by students of the opposite biological sex while students of the opposite biological sex are present or could be present.” [...]
The bill provides that any student who encounters “a person of the opposite biological sex” in a bathroom or locker room shall have a legal cause of action if it’s because the school gave the trans student permission or didn’t explicitly prohibit the trans student from using that facility. The “aggrieved” student would be entitled to $2,500 from the offending school “for each instance” he or she encountered a trans student in a sex-divided facility in addition to monetary damages “for all psychological, emotional, and physical harm suffered” and attorney fees.
One of the high school students who participated in crafting the legislation told the Associated Press that she "took AP government a couple of years ago and definitely did not learn about this side of politics."
No shit. It isn't actually suppose to be this way. Punishing schools for choosing not to discriminate against transgender students has nothing to do with the screening process for superintendents, but this is the world we live in now where the inmates of the Flying Monkey Caucus are running the asylum.
The unsuspecting high schools students also probably weren't aware of the positively Orwellian language that politicians use to polish their turds.
Calling Embry's legislation the "Kentucky Student Privacy Act" is abominable. There's nothing private about carefully scrutinizing students' genitals.