Photo: Alamy
Gov. Kevin Stitt, R-Okla., signed a bill requiring students to use restrooms in public schools based on their biological sex. Schools in Oklahoma can lose funding if they refuse to follow the procedural rules.
Senate Bill 615, signed into law Wednesday, specifically targets public schools serving students in pre-k through 12th grade.
Under the new law, students will need to use restrooms or changing rooms based on their sex assigned at birth. Schools will need to “provide a reasonable accommodation to any individual” not wanting to comply with the bill’s provisions, such as a single-occupancy restroom or changing room.
School districts refusing to comply with the law will have their state funding reduced by five percent.
On the same day, the governor also signed a bill prohibiting abortions from the moment of conception.
During an interview with Fox News Digital, Stitt defended the measure, saying “it’s common sense” and necessary to protect young female students.
“It’s common sense,” Stitt said. “It’s kind of crazy that we have to pass laws like this nowadays, but it just simply says we’re gonna protect girls. Girls are going to go to girls’ bathrooms, boys are going to go to boys’ bathrooms, and that’s gonna be law for children K through 12 in Oklahoma. We’ll have a third, single-use, single-person bathroom for anyone who maybe doesn’t, you know, wanna use any one of those bathrooms — which is fine.”
State Sen. David Bullard, the author of the legislation, praised the state legislature and the governor for “approving this common-sense legislation.”
“We must not allow the shrills of the far left to replace facts of biological science and irrefutable evidence,” Bullard said in a press release. “As John Adams said, ‘Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.’ The fact is there are only two sexes, male and female. Our kids deserve and demand privacy and protection, and in Oklahoma, they will now get it.”
This is not the first time the Oklahoma governor has stood up for women’s rights in the public arena.
According to the Associated Press, Stitt signed the Save Women’s Sports Act, preventing biological males identifying as females from competing in women’s sports in high school and college.