On March 1, South Dakota Governor Denis Daugaard vetoed a bill that would restrict transgender students from using the bathroom of their choice. According to CNN, HB 1008 would have prevented students from using any restroom or locker room besides the one that corresponded with their sex at birth. A total of eleven other states, including Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, have drafted similar bills, but HB 1008 was the first to pass through the Republican-majority State Assembly and to reach the Governor’s office, passing with a fifty-eight to ten vote in the House and with a twenty to fifteen vote in the Senate.

Daugaard felt that the bill did not “address any pressing issue concerning the school districts of South Dakota.” Others agreed, going as far as to claim that the bill was more discriminatory than helpful, and experts such as Kris Hayashi expressed their concern that the bill would simply be a liability, causing endless, costly legal battles. Hayashi works as the executive director for the Transgender Law Center and, like many others, mourns laws such as HB 1008 which are often viewed as blatant discrimination on the basis of gender identity. “Every single child, including transgender youth, should have the opportunity to succeed and be treated fairly by our schools and elected officials,” Hayashi explained in an interview with the Huffington Post. UCLA’s Williams Institute further presented a serious danger for transgender people in segregated restrooms, reporting that 70 percent of transgender people experienced harassment in segregated restrooms, and about 10 percent of transgender people were physically assaulted in segregated restrooms.

Opposition to the Governor’s veto, including furious parents, argued that this right could simply be an excuse for students to violate their peers’ privacy. State Representative Bud Hulsey, the Tennessee lawmaker who proposed a bill to prevent the introduction of gender-neutral bathrooms into K-12 public schools, claims that gender segregation in bathrooms is “best for the students that go to that school.” He believes students will be far safer with separate bathrooms rather than a gender neutral substitute. State Representative Frank Artiles worried that allowing students to choose a bathroom based on their gender identity could cause outrage if minors were seen “in various states of undress” by their peers. Many state governments have seen countless lawsuits from angry parents regarding their children’s privacy because of these laws.

In 2013, California legislature passed AB 1266, which protects transgender students’ rights to use the bathroom of their choice in public K-12 schools, passing the Senate with a vote of twenty-one to nine. Eighteen other states, including Massachusetts, guarantee similar protections to its transgender students. “I feel extremely lucky to live in such a tolerant area of the United States,” confessed an anonymous Wilcox student, “Our state has made so much progress towards equality, even while others fall behind.” Even in states such as California where transgender students are protected by law, discrimination based on gender identity is introduced at a young age. One Colorado family was outraged to learn that their first grader was not allowed to use the bathroom of their choice because they were born a male, even though they were protected by state law. Many children may face such discrimination before they learn to multiply.

Beyond these obvious offenses, transgender students often face social discrimination in their youth that cannot be regulated or prevented by laws and regulations. “I feel the pain the transgender kids in South Dakota will feel,” wrote Terri Bruce, a transgender man from South Dakota. Throughout the United States, 75 percent of LGBTQ students reported harassment at some point in their K-12 education, according to Times Union, which could explain their 14 percent dropout rate and 12 percent unemployment rate. Many LGBTQ activists advocate for transgender students’ right to use the bathroom of their choice as a way to combat the harassment they face and to guide them toward health and success.