BISMARCK, North Dakota (LifeSiteNews) — North Dakota Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong signed legislation on Thursday strengthening the state’s protection against males in female facilities and forbidding schools from adopting unisex restrooms or showers meant for more than one person at a time.
North Dakota banned schools from letting members of one sex use facilities meant for the other in 2023 but did not preclude gender-neutral facilities.
HB 1144 addresses that by declaring that any “restroom or shower room on school grounds, which is accessible by multiple individuals at one time, must be designated for use exclusively for males or exclusively for females and may be used only by members of the designated sex. Multi-stall gender neutral restrooms and shower rooms are prohibited.” The bill does not prohibit single-occupancy facilities.
HB 1144 also strengthens the 2023 law’s language prohibiting schools from requiring the use of “preferred gender pronouns” and empowers parents to file complaints for violations of the policy and the state attorney general to take action on those complaints.
“The court may assess a civil penalty in an amount not to exceed two thousand five hundred dollars for each violation of this section,” HB 1144 says.
The new law “reinforces the message that our laws are not arbitrary or without meaning,” Republican state Sen. Randy Lemm said, the North Dakota Monitor reports.
Critics warn that forcing girls to share intimate facilities such as bathrooms, showers, or changing areas with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status.
In Virginia, former Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent Scott Ziegler set off a national firestorm for allegedly covering up the rape of a female student by a “transgender” classmate in a girls bathroom due to its damaging implications for the LGBT movement. He was convicted in 2023 of “using his official position to retaliate against someone for exercising their rights” by firing a teacher who testified about the situation before a grand jury, but prosecutors eventually dropped charges relating to allegedly lying about having no knowledge of the situation at a school board meeting.
