Chad Griffin, president of the Human Right Campaign, added that the governor “chose to do the right thing”.
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The American Civil Liberties Union says Gov. Dennis Daugaard made a symbolic statement when he vetoed the measure Tuesday.
HB 1008 would have mandated that South Dakota students used bathrooms and locker rooms based on their biology, not their gender of choice.
Daugaard, before the bill passed and was sent to his desk, told reporters it sounded like a “good idea”, but also admitted he had never actually met any transgender person.
By forcing the transgender student-known in the media as “Student A”-to use a separate locker room, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights ruled that Township High School District 211 had discriminated against the student “on the basis of sex”. But he says Daugaard’s veto means that such support now goes beyond his friends and extends to state government.
“Gov. Daugaard has demonstrated true leadership in listening to the hundreds of transgender South Dakotans and their families who would have been directly impacted by this bill”, National Center for Transgender Equality Executive Director Mara Keisling said, thanking the governor.
In his veto message, Daugaard said the bill “does not address any pressing issue” and that such decisions were best left to local school officials.
The bill requires transgender pupils to use restrooms and locker rooms in public schools that correspond to their gender at birth and not the gender that fits their current identity.
The bill’s text does not use the word “transgender”, the term for people who don’t identify as the gender they’re born as and who often take steps to change their gender. By vetoing the bill, Daugaard may literally have helped save young lives.
The Republican-controlled Legislature approved the proposal last month. State House of Representatives Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican, said he would consider legislation to block the measure. The bill was particularly focused on public schools, and would have barred schools from letting students use bathrooms and locker rooms assigned to the opposite biological sex (though it would allow them to create gender-neutral facilities for those who want them).
Dennis Daugaard has vetoed HB 1008, which would have restricted access to public school restrooms or locker rooms to students of the same biological sex.
Smith said people from across the state and country reached out to the governor to urge this veto.
His chief of staff, Tony Venhuizen, says the governor wouldn’t choose the option of letting the legislation become law by not signing it. Although there have been promises by an outside entity to provide legal defense to a school district, this provision is not memorialized in the bill. The legislation cruised through the House in January in a 58-10 vote, then passed the Senate by a 20-15 vote in mid-February.
The governor said he expected the proposal would be ripe for legislative consideration later this year or in the 2017 legislative session. South Dakota would have been the first state in the nation with such a law.
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Supporters of 1008 argued the measure was not discriminatory, but rather, protection for all South Dakota students.
