Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, speaks Wednesday, Jan. 14., 2026, during a news conference supporting legislation to put existing rules in the state budget on K-12 bathrooms and locker rooms into permanent law and extend them to public colleges. (Photo by Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — South Carolina GOP leaders want to add colleges to 2-year-old rules requiring K-12 public school students to use bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their biological sex at birth.
A House panel began hearing Wednesday on the legislation sponsored by 60 Republicans, which largely mirrors a law that’s been part of the state budget since 2024. Other than making those rules permanent state law, the proposal would extend them to the public colleges.
About 20 people weighed in during the one-hour hearing, with legislators calling on opponents and advocates in rotation. No vote was taken. A second public hearing is planned for Tuesday.
Like the existing rules, the bill’s restrictions apply to multi-stalled restrooms and places where students undress, to include locker rooms and gym showers. During overnight trips, students of different genders can’t sleep in the same room.
Colleges would newly be required to give students in dorms the option of living only with people of the same biological gender.
The penalty would be the same as the budget law: School districts and colleges risk losing up to 25% of their state aid for violations.
Legislators knew of no school district punished under rules first inserted into the state budget during Senate floor debate. While such clauses are technically one-year laws, they carry the same authority as permanent code.
Wednesday’s hearing came a day after lawyers argued two cases involving transgender students before the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices heard back-to-back arguments about laws in West Virginia and Idaho that ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports teams. South Carolina lawmakers passed a similar ban in 2022.
“In South Carolina, we know what a woman is,” Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey said during a news conference ahead of the House hearing.
“And if it falls on South Carolina to educate the rest of the country about what a woman is, we are happy to,” the Edgefield Republican added.
Legislators contend it’s not a debate over discrimination but one of privacy.
“For generations, restrooms, locker rooms and overnight trips have been separated by sex, not because it was political, but because it’s common sense,” said Rep. Fawn Pedalino, R-Turbeville. “This is not about targeting anyone. It’s about setting firm statewide standards.”
GOP leaders said legislation is needed to make the rules more permanent.
“We just want to get this straight and move on so we’re not having to continually deal with it,” said House Speaker Pro Tem Tommy Pope, the bill’s main sponsor.
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But debate to remove budget clauses — called provisos — is rare.
The one-year laws generally roll over from one budget to the next indefinitely, unless legislators specifically vote to take them out. There was zero debate on the bathroom rules last year.
Courtney Thomas of the American Civil Liberty Union’s South Carolina chapter called it election-year politics.
It’s concerning what the Legislature’s Republican leaders decided to highlight during the second day of the 2026 legislative session: “This is low-hanging fruit, unfortunately, to politicize a moment when they need eyes and attention and campaign dollars,” Thomas said.
The ACLU opposes both the existing budget rule and the proposed legislation, arguing it stigmatizes transgender children and adults and opens everyone to scrutiny of their gender.
“Let’s just say your daughter or your niece wants to try out a shorter haircut,” Thomas said. “What if someone sees her in a bathroom and decides, ‘Hey, you shouldn’t be here.’ That is harmful for that girl.
“This bill creates an air of suspicion that would ask students and teachers and administrators to police who is and who isn’t feminine enough,” Thomas added.
Other existing laws criminalize harassment and violence in restrooms to protect all South Carolinians, making this proposal unnecessary, she said.
Pope said legislators understand that transgender students have rights, but other students have rights too.
“We want to respect that child. That child can have access to privacy,” said the York Republican. “But to do it, we don’t need to rob everyone else’s daughter.”
A then-eighth-grade transgender student in Berkeley County filed a federal lawsuit in November 2024 challenging the budget rule. The student dropped his appeal in October after switching to virtual learning, but the underlying case is still pending.
However, the case is on pause until the U.S. Supreme Court hands down a decision in the cases it heard Tuesday.
Opponents at the hearing included Jessicka Spearman Childs of Anderson County. Her transgender son took summer classes to graduate high school early “because he was exhausted due to bathroom bans in our local high school,” she said.
“This bill is not about privacy,” she said. “This is about making a bathroom into a courtroom. It’s about legislating fear, punishing schools financially and inviting lawsuits over hypothetical situations.”
Spearman Childs, who is nearly 6 feet tall, said strangers have questioned her about her own biological sex. Strangers have asked her to expose her breasts to prove she is a woman, she said.
Cristina Picozzi, executive director of Columbia’s Harriet Hancock Center for the LGBTQ+ community, said people often question the gender of her wife, a military veteran with a short haircut.
“I have seen firsthand how stereotypes impact her,” Picozzi said. “Before her last deployment, we were stopping in Charleston and the person at the counter repeatedly chose to misgender her when we were discussing clothing, even after we offered corrections.”
And when the couple goes out on dates, Picozzi said she intentionally accompanies her wife to the bathroom to prevent harassment.
“South Carolinians already manage privacy in multi-occupancy restrooms every day through stalls, doors and shared norms,” she said. “This bill invites scrutinization of one another’s bodies and identities, which undermines privacy for everybody.”
Picozzi also said 40% of LGBTQ+ youth who attend programs at the Harriet Hancock Center choose home schooling because of bullying in the public school system.
Greg Green of Lexington, a transgender man, said he’d be attacked if he entered a women’s restroom. “I’m going to be called sick,” he told legislators about what they’re requiring students to do.
Most proponents who signed up to speak voiced their support without giving any personal details.
Elizabeth Enns of York County said “many girls feel exposed, anxious and unsafe. Some have stopped using facilities altogether. Others have suffered harassment or voyeurism.” She did not cite any specific situations.
Marsha Gross, president of York County Republican Women, pointed to the same scenario cited in 2024 by the budget rule’s sponsor. Sen. Wes Climer of Rock Hill said at the time that his proposal was in response to a then-18-year-old senior at Rock Hill High daily using the women’s locker room.
A pair of Democrats on the committee, Reps. Tiffany Spann-Wilder of North Charleston and Jerry Govan of Orangeburg, questioned how much schools might have to spend to comply with the law and whether proponents had any data on the number of complaints against schools. No one did.
Sara Beth Nolan, who represents Alliance Defending Freedom, the group championing the bill, said many schools already have single-stall restrooms, or students can use bathrooms in the school nurse’s office.
In the Berkeley County case, school officials said the student was given the option of using a single-stall bathroom in the nurse’s office. But that wasn’t practical, since it was significantly further away from the student’s classes, according to the lawsuit.
Pope said the only concern he’s heard from colleges is over locker rooms. Colleges often assign away teams to use the opposite sex’s locker room during games. He said he plans to address that with language clarifying that members of male and female teams can’t be in a locker room at the same time.
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