Last-minute measure accelerates Ohio’s “toilet law”

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — A last-minute bill could speed up passage of a bill that has become controversial in the Ohio House of Representatives and is known as the “toilet bill.”

“People can get a lot out of attacks on LGBTQ rights,” said Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood).

“We want to protect children, and this is the way to do it,” said Rep. Jena Powell (R-Arcanum).

House Bill 183 would require both public and private schools and colleges to provide certain facilities “exclusively for students of the male or female sex.” The bill also “strictly prohibits the construction of genderless or gender-inclusive facilities,” such as restrooms or locker rooms.

“Boys can never become girls, so boys should not go into girls’ locker rooms,” said Rep. Josh Williams (R-Sylvania).

“We’ve decided to focus our time on the restrooms, and I think that’s just a waste of taxpayers’ time and money,” said Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo (D-Upper Arlington).

After the bill stalled in the Ohio House of Representatives for more than two months, one of the last actions of Ohio House members during their last summer session was to insert HB183 into Senate Bill 104 – a way to speed up its passage.

“I think most Ohioans want us to focus on many other priorities, namely their children’s schools and bathrooms – not this one,” Russo said. “This board keeps focusing on a small group of kids and bullying and harassing kids.”

“This is probably the simplest, most straightforward bill we will vote on in the state of Ohio in the next five years,” Powell said.

The bill lists some exceptions for toilet use:

• A child under the age of ten who is assisted by a parent, guardian or family member, and the parent, guardian or family member who is assisting the child;
• A person with a disability who is assisted by another person and the person providing the assistance;
• An employee of a school or institution whose job duties require the employee to enter a restroom, locker room, dressing room, or shower room designed for a biological sex that does not match the employee’s biological sex; or
• A person who enters a toilet, locker room, dressing room, or shower room and reasonably believes that there is a genuine emergency situation.

While Democrats continue to argue that the bill is both harmful to students and transphobic, Governor Mike DeWine is still waiting for the bill to arrive on his desk.

“I’m in favor of people, children, being able to go to the bathroom with their gender assignment so that they have that protection,” DeWine said. “But I have to look at the specific wording.”

The Senate will reconvene in November, and because the policy is now enshrined in Senate legislation, no committee hearings will be held in that chamber before a vote.