This week, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, vetoed a bill backed by Republicans that would have put requirements in place regarding which bathrooms transgender students can use.
The legislation, Senate Bill 1040, would have required transgender students to use public school bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their biological sex instead of their gender identity. Legislation like this would protect women’s spaces from males who identify as women, which Townhall has covered.
In her veto letter, Hobbs described the bill as “discriminatory” and claimed that it “harms” transgender children.
“Senate Bill 1040 is yet another discriminatory act against LGBTQ+ youth passed by the majority at the state Legislature," Hobbs wrote in her veto letter. "I will veto every bill that aims to attack and harm children."
According to AZCentral, state Sen. John Kavanagh, a Republican sponsor of the bill, said that Hobbs has forgotten about the privacy needs of “innocent young girls” and said that Democrats are “catering to an extremist culture by pushing ‘gender neutrality’ as a means to win political points from their liberal base.”
In an interview with the outlet, Kavanagh said that he would draft a similar bill as a “shower bill,” because showers are areas where girls “require the most privacy.”
“Hopefully she’ll [Hobbs] respect the right of young girls to not be standing naked next to biological males who identify as females in the showers,” he reportedly said.
In March, House Republicans introduced a bill meant to protect parents rights in education, dubbed the Parents Bill of Rights. On the day the bill was introduced at the United States Capitol, a father named Scott Smith shared that his daughter was sexually assaulted by “a boy wearing a skirt” in a girls’ bathroom at her school.
“Eighteen months ago I was arrested at a Loudoun County school board meeting. I was restrained, tackled and charged with disorderly conduct and slandered in the media across the world. But my real crime was voicing my concerns as a parent and standing up for my family and my community,” he said. “I went to the school board meeting to speak up for my daughter and to get some answers that we deserved. Instead of putting her safety and the safety of other students first, the Loudoun County school board tried to hide the facts and protect their administrators at all costs. We now know that three girls were attacked by the same now-convicted sexual predator.”