A Kentucky state lawmaker has proposed
a bill that would allow students to sue school administrators over
transgender students using bathrooms, showers or locker rooms that
don't correspond with their sex assigned at birth.
Republican Senator C.B. Embry's
Kentucky Student Privacy Act states that “Parents have a reasonable
expectation that schools will not allow minor children to be viewed
in various states of undress by members of the opposite biological
sex, nor allow minor children to view members of the opposite sex in
various states of undress.”
Under the proposed legislation,
students are entitled to sue school officials if they allowed a
transgender student to use a facility designated for the opposite sex
or if they “failed to take reasonable steps to prohibit the person
encountered from using facilities designated for use by the opposite
biological sex.” Aggrieved students would be eligible for damages
for psychological and emotional harm and $2,500 per incident.
Embry's bill also calls for the school to pay all attorney fees.
Embry told U.S.
News & World Report that he wrote the bill on behalf of
the Family Foundation of Kentucky, a Christian conservative group
opposed to LGBT rights. The group asked Embry to draft the bill in
response to a Louisville high school's decision to allow a
transgender female student to use the girl's bathroom.
Embry suggested that a lesbian friend
approves of his proposal: “I have a friend, and we can all say
these things, who is a homosexual and she agrees that she doesn't
want men in her bathroom.”