Tag Archives: transgender

Peaceful protests at Disneyland headquarters “It’s ok to stand for righteousness”

Ephesians 6:13 “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Parents March on Disneyland to Protest Studio’s Woke LGBTQ+ Agenda for Children
  • The peaceful protest was organized by Hold the Line, the Christian activist group that spearheaded last week’s demonstration at Disney corporate headquarters in Burbank. On Wednesday, they were joined by members of Turning Point USA, the conservative non-profit headed by Charlie Kirk.
  • The Disneyland worker addressed the crowd by urging fellow conservative Disney employees to stand up for themselves.
  • Hold the Line identifies itself as a Christian activist group and is headed by musician and author Sean Feucht. The group held anti-lockdown protests during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Recently leaked videos also show Disney employees openly discussing their plans to inject more gay and transgender messaging into the studio’s content for children.

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Transgender student wins as U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bathroom appeal

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding with his gender identity.

The justices left in place a lower court’s ruling that the Gloucester County School Board had acted unlawfully in preventing Gavin Grimm from using the boys’ bathroom before he graduated in 2017. In doing so, the court opted against taking up a major transgender rights case that could have set a nationwide precedent on the issue.

The court turned away the board’s appeal of a 2020 ruling by the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Grimm is protected under the federal law known as Title IX that bars sex discrimination in education and the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that people be treated equally under the law.

The brief court order noted that conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would have taken up the case.

“We won,” Grimm, now 22, wrote on Twitter. “I have nothing more to say but thank you, thank you, thank you. Honored to have been part of this victory.”

Grimm sued the school board in 2015. The Supreme Court previously took up the case in 2016 but did not issue a ruling and sent it back to lower courts.

The 4th Circuit ruling does not set a national legal precedent, but it does apply to the five states within its jurisdiction: Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

Bathroom access represents one of the major issues in the fight over transgender rights, and Grimm’s suit was the most prominent legal case on the subject. But the legal and political battles over protections for transgender Americans, both in education and in society as a whole, are set to continue.

Several states including Florida have enacted laws that block transgender women and girls from competing in sports. The Supreme Court may yet rule on the bathroom access issue and related transgender rights matters in future cases.

“Our work is not yet done,” said Josh Block, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents Grimm.

Block said the decision by the justices not to hear the case indicates that they see no urgency to weigh in on the issue.

“The court can see that trans kids have been using the restrooms and none of the apocalyptic fears have actually come to pass,” Block added.

The school board did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Joe Biden’s administration, reversing the position taken under his predecessor Donald Trump, said on June 16 that Title IX protects both gender identity and sexual orientation. The administration has not said specifically how that applies to school bathroom access.

Grimm, assigned female gender at birth, identifies as male. Grimm initially enrolled at Gloucester High School as a girl and started attending as a male student in September 2014. With the school’s permission, Grimm used the boys’ bathroom for about seven weeks without incident.

After complaints from parents, the school board adopted a policy in December 2014 requiring students to use the bathroom corresponding with their gender at birth. Grimm was given the option of using a separate gender-neutral bathroom, but refused, feeling stigmatized.

Judge Henry Floyd, writing for the 4th Circuit, said the school board’s actions constituted “a special kind of discrimination against a child that he will no doubt carry with him for life.” The 4th Circuit upheld a federal judge’s 2019 ruling in Grimm’s favor.

Grimm’s case was previously set to be argued at the Supreme Court in 2017 but was taken off the schedule after Trump’s administration rescinded guidance issued under his predecessor Barack Obama regarding bathroom access for transgender students.

The Biden administration has reversed various Trump policies on LGBT issues.

The Supreme Court issued a landmark 2020 ruling that gay and transgender people are protected under a federal law that bars sex discrimination in employment. That ruling helped guide the 4th Circuit’s decision in Grimm’s case and the Biden administration’s position on Title IX protections.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Mississippi governor signs law banning transgender athletes from women’s sports

(Reuters) – Mississippi’s Republican governor on Thursday signed legislation banning transgender athletes from competing in women and girls’ sports, the first U.S. state to pass such legislation this year.

Governor Tate Reeves had vowed earlier this month he would sign the bill, tweeting that the measure was needed “to protect young girls from being forced to compete with biological males for athletic opportunities.”

Some 37 bills regulating transgender athletes have been introduced in 20 states this year, according to LGBTQ advocates at the Human Rights Campaign.

“Governor Reeves’ eagerness to become the face of the latest anti-transgender push is appalling, as he chooses fear and division over facts and science,” said Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David.

Idaho passed the first-of-its-kind “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” last year, but it was blocked by a federal judge who found it unconstitutional.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani, Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

In landmark ruling, U.S. Supreme Court bars discrimination against LGBT workers

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday delivered a watershed victory for LGBT rights and a defeat for President Donald Trump’s administration by ruling that a longstanding federal law barring workplace discrimination protects gay and transgender employees.

The landmark 6-3 ruling represented the biggest moment for LGBT rights in the United States since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015. Two conservative justices joined the court’s four liberals in the decision: Neil Gorsuch, a 2017 Trump appointee who wrote the ruling, and Chief Justice John Roberts.

The justices decided that gay and transgender people are protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex as well as race, color, national origin and religion.

Workplace bias against gay and transgender employees had remained legal in much of the country, with 28 U.S. states lacking comprehensive measures against employment discrimination. The ruling – in two gay rights cases from Georgia and New York and a transgender rights case from Michigan – recognizes new worker protections in federal law.

“The Supreme Court’s historic decision affirms what shouldn’t have even been a debate: LGBTQ Americans should be able to work without fear of losing jobs because of who they are,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the gay rights group GLAAD.

The legal fight focused on the definition of “sex” in Title VII. The plaintiffs, along with civil rights groups and many large companies, had argued that discriminating against gay and transgender workers was inherently based on their sex and consequently was illegal.

Trump’s administration had backed the employers who were sued for discrimination. The administration and the employers argued that Congress did not intend for Title VII to protect gay and transgender people when it passed the law. Gorsuch conceded that point in his opinion but said what mattered was the text of the law.

“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” Gorsuch wrote. “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”

Strongly supported by evangelical Christian voters, Trump has taken actions that have undermined gay and transgender rights since taking office in 2017.

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the ruling. Writing in dissent, Alito said the court had basically re-written the law.

“There is only one word for what the court has done today: legislation,” Alito wrote.

‘TREATED FAIRLY’

The court ruled in two consolidated cases about gay people who have said they were fired due to their sexual orientation. One involved a former county child welfare services coordinator from Georgia named Gerald Bostock. The other involved a New York skydiving instructor named Donald Zarda who died after the litigation began, with the matter then pursued by his estate.

The court also ruled in a case that involved a transgender funeral director named Aimee Stephens fired by a Detroit funeral home after revealing plans to transition from male to female. Stephens died in May. Stephens’ wife Donna is now representing the estate.

“I am grateful for this victory to honor the legacy of Aimee, and to ensure people are treated fairly regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” Donna Stephens said in a statement.

Gorsuch wrote that “there is no way an employer can discriminate against those who check the homosexual or transgender box without discriminating in part because of an applicant’s sex.”

“By discriminating against homosexuals, the employer intentionally penalizes men for being attracted to men and women for being attracted to women. By discriminating against transgender persons, the employer unavoidably discriminates against persons with one sex identified at birth and another today,” Gorsuch wrote.

The Human Rights Campaign gay rights group called the decision “a landmark victory for LGBTQ equality.”

Alphonso David, the group’s president, said, “No one should be denied a job or fired simply because of who they are or whom they love.”

The White House had no immediate comment.

Trump’s Justice Department reversed the government’s position taken under Democratic former President Barack Obama that Title VII covered sexual orientation and gender identity.

Trump’s administration last week issued a rule that would lift anti-discrimination protections for transgender people in healthcare.

His administration also has backed the right of certain businesses to refuse to serve gay people on the basis of religious objections to gay marriage, banned most transgender service members from the military and rescinded protections on bathroom access for transgender students in public schools.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

North Carolina ‘bathroom bill’ settlement approved

FILE PHOTO: A bathroom sign welcomes both genders in Durham, North Carolina May 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) – Transgender people in North Carolina can use any public restroom in state-run buildings that conforms with their gender identity under a U.S. court settlement approved on Tuesday, in the latest turn of a long-running dispute that divided the state.

The settlement, which overturns part of state law, ends a three-year legal fight by transgender people in North Carolina seeking the right to use the bathroom of their gender identity.

A 2016 North Carolina law, known as House Bill 2, required transgender people in state-run buildings use the bathrooms, changing rooms and showers that corresponded to the sex on their birth certificates.

The American Civil Liberties Union represented transgender plaintiffs seeking to block the law in court, arguing it violated their rights to equal protection and privacy under the U.S. Constitution.

“While this part of the court fight may be ending, so much urgent work remains as long as people who are LGBTQ are denied basic protections from violence and discrimination simply because of who they are,” Irena Como, acting legal director of the ACLU of North Carolina, said in a statement.

Some businesses and sports leagues boycotted North Carolina after the passage of the law, which they saw as discriminatory against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

Lawmakers in some other states had proposed similar legislation that failed to advance.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder ruled in 2016 that the state’s university system must allow transgender students to use bathrooms matching their gender identity.

Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration also challenged the law in court.

Facing pressure in the courts, the North Carolina legislature in 2017 replaced House Bill 2 with House Bill 142.

The bill stated that the state legislature had the power to regulate bathroom access, but the legislature did not take action at that time to define access.

The new law left transgender people in limbo, according to the ACLU, which amended its lawsuit to challenge the new law.

The ACLU and the group Lambda Legal later reached a settlement with North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, the ACLU said in a statement. It went to Schroeder for final approval.

Schroeder, in an eight-page ruling on Tuesday, said the settlement bars state officials from using the legislation “to prevent transgender people from lawfully using public facilities in accordance with their gender identity.”

The Republican-controlled North Carolina General Assembly filed court papers opposing the settlement.

House Bill 142 continues to prohibit cities in North Carolina from creating their own ordinances protecting LGBT people from discrimination until December 2020, and that was not affected by the agreement, according to the ACLU.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Colorado police probe what sparked deadly shooting at suburban school

People wait outside near the STEM School during a shooting incident in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, U.S. in this May 7, 2019 image obtained via social media. SHREYA NALLAPATI/VIA REUTERS

By Keith Coffman

HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. (Reuters) – Colorado police on Wednesday tried to determine why two students walked into their school and allegedly opened fire with handguns, killing one person and wounding eight, miles from the site of one of the nation’s deadliest school massacres.

Douglas County sheriff Tony Spurlock told a morning news conference that one of the suspected shooters at the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) School in Highlands Ranch, previously identified as male, was a female under the age of 18. The other suspect was Devon Erickson, 18, he said.

A police officer reassures people waiting outside near the STEM School during a shooting incident in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, U.S. in this May 7, 2019 still frame obtained via social media video. SHREYA NALLAPATI/VIA REUTERS

A police officer reassures people waiting outside near the STEM School during a shooting incident in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, U.S. in this May 7, 2019 still frame obtained via social media video. SHREYA NALLAPATI/VIA REUTERS

He declined to identify the person slain in the attack, other than to say he was an 18-year-old male who had been due to graduate in the three days.

The reason for the attack remained unclear, Spurlock said.

Denver’s ABC television affiliate, citing an unidentified police source, reported on Tuesday that one of the suspects wanted to transition to male from female and had been bullied for it.

Spurlock declined to answer a reporter’s question about whether the younger suspect was transgender.

“Right now we are identifying the individual as a female, because that’s where we’re at,” he said. “We originally thought the juvenile was a male by appearance.”

Spurlock said the suspect had been identified as male “before the detectives were able to get the medical – and detectives were able to speak to her.”

Erickson was expected in Douglas County District Court in nearby Castle Rock at 1:30 p.m. MDT (1830 GMT). The second suspect also will appear in court on Wednesday, said District Attorney George Brauchler.

The two suspects opened fire in two separate classrooms and were arrested within minutes at the public charter school about 25 miles (40 km) south of Denver, Spurlock said.

“A student’s life was taken too soon by this act of violence,” Colorado Governor Jared Polis said at a news conference. “I share the heartbreak, the frustration, the sickness.”

Some of the worst mass shootings in the United States have occurred in Colorado.

The attack occurred less than a month after the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in nearby Littleton, about 5 miles (8 km) from the Highlands Ranch school.

In 2012 a man opened fire at a movie theater in Aurora, another Denver suburb, killing 12 people and wounding scores more.

What happened inside the STEM school remains unclear.

Spurlock said there was a “struggle” as officers entered the building and some students said one victim was shot in the chest as he tried to tackle a shooter.

A man who identified himself as Fernando Montoya said his 17-year-old son, a junior at STEM, was shot three times when a shooter walked into his classroom and opened fire.

“He said a guy pulled a pistol out of a guitar case and started to shoot,” Montoya told the Denver TV station.

The bloodshed shocked the affluent suburb of Highlands Ranch. Parents and students had considered the school a safe place for its 1,850 pupils ranging from kindergarten to 12th grade.

The attack came a week after a gunman opened fire on the Charlotte campus of the University of North Carolina, killing two people and wounding four others.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen and Peter Szekely in New York and Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Bill Trott)

Supreme Court to decide if LGBT workers protected under sex discrimination law

FILE PHOTO: The U.S. Supreme Court building is seen in Washington, U.S., March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether U.S. law banning workplace discrimination on the basis of sex protects gay and transgender workers, as the conservative-majority court waded into a fierce dispute involving a divisive social issue.

At issue in the high-profile legal fight is whether gay and transgender people are covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex as well as race, color, national origin and religion.

The court will take up two cases concerning gay people who have said they were fired due to their sexual orientation, one involving a New York skydiving instructor named Donald Zarda and another brought by a former county child welfare services coordinator from Georgia named Gerald Bostock.

The court also will take up a Detroit funeral home’s bid to reverse a ruling that it violated federal law by firing a transgender funeral director named Aimee Stephens after Stephens revealed plans to transition from male to female.

The court will hear oral arguments and issue a ruling in its next term, which starts in October.

President Donald Trump’s administration has argued that Title VII does not cover sexual orientation or gender identity. The Republican president’s administration reversed the approach taken under Democratic former President Barack Obama by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal laws banning workplace discrimination.

The Title VII fight marks the first major test on a divisive social issue for the nine justices since Trump’s conservative appointee Brett Kavanaugh joined the court in October after a contentious Senate confirmation process. Kavanaugh replaced Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative noted for his support for gay rights who retired last year.

Kennedy wrote the 5-4 ruling in 2015 legalizing gay marriage nationally, a landmark in the U.S. gay rights movement. Kennedy also was the author of the court’s important 2003 ruling striking down laws criminalizing gay sex.

The Supreme Court has a 5-4 conservative majority that includes two Trump appointees, Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

The legal fight centers on the definition of “sex” in Title VII. The plaintiffs in the cases, along with civil rights groups and many large companies, have argued that discriminating against gay and transgender workers is inherently based on their sex and thus is unlawful.

But Trump’s Justice Department and the employers that were sued have argued that Congress did not mean for Title VII to extend to gay and transgender people when it passed the law in 1964.

Zarda, fired after revealing his sexual orientation in 2010, died in a 2014 accident while participating in a form of skydiving in which people jump off a high structure or cliff. His estate has continued the litigation.

The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in February 2018 ruled in Zarda’s favor after a trial judge threw out his original claim.

Bostock worked for Clayton County, just south of Atlanta, from 2003 until being fired in 2013 shortly after he started participating in a gay recreational softball league called the “Hotlanta Softball League.” The county has said he was fired following an audit of the program he managed. His lawsuit was tossed out the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Harris Funeral Homes, the employer in the transgender case, is owned by Thomas Rost, who identifies himself as a devout Christian. The company has a strict sex-specific dress code that requires male employees to wear suits and women to wear dresses or skirts. Stephens, formerly known as Anthony Stephens, joined the company in October 2007.

Stephens was fired when he announced plans to transition from male to female.

Rost said that “this is not going to work out,” according to court papers. Stephens subsequently turned to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which sued on Stephens’ behalf in 2014. The company is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group.

The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018 ruled against the company.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Colorado baker in case of Supreme Court sues state over ‘persecution’

FILE PHOTO: Baker Jack Phillips decorates a cake in his Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado U.S. on September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo

By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) – A Colorado baker who won a narrow Supreme Court victory over his refusal to make a wedding cake for a gay couple is suing the state after it launched another case against him for declining to create a cake for a transgender woman.

Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in the city of Lakewood, accuses Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission of violating his constitutional rights to free speech, freedom of religion, equal protection and due process, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Denver on Tuesday.

“This lawsuit is necessary to stop Colorado’s continuing persecution of Phillips,” the written complaint alleges. Also named in the lawsuit are Governor John Hickenlooper and Cynthia Coffman, the state attorney general.

Phillips seeks permanent injunctions against the state from taking any enforcement action against Phillips, who the lawsuit says was “vindicated” by the Supreme Court ruling.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the Colorado’s civil rights commission was hostile toward Phillips’ Christian beliefs when it cited him for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in 2012, but did not rule on whether he violated Colorado’s public accommodation statute.

Through a spokeswoman, the civil rights commission declined to comment on Phillips’ lawsuit.

The lawsuit stems from a complaint filed by Denver attorney Autumn Scardina with the civil rights commission in 2017, in which she claims that Phillips refused to bake a cake that “celebrates my transition from male to female,” court documents showed.

Scardina did not immediately return a phone message left at her law office.

The director of the state’s Civil Rights Division, Aubrey Elenis, ruled in June that Phillips discriminated against Scardina.

“The evidence thus demonstrates that the refusal to provide service to (Scardina) was based on (her) transgender status,” Elenis wrote in a probable cause determination.

The finding by Elenis requires both sides to resolve the issue through “compulsory mediation,” the document said.

Phillips is also seeking $100,000 in punitive damages against Elenis “for her unconstitutional actions,” according to the lawsuit.

Daniel Ramos, executive director of One Colorado, a group that advocates for the LGBTQ community, blasted the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the conservative Christian group whose lawyers represent Phillips.

“We have seen the ADF launch similar lawsuits across the country that target nondiscrimination laws and civil rights agencies, and this broad lawsuit they filed on behalf of Jack Phillips reads as more of the same,” Ramos said.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Editing by Dan WHitcomb)

Male, female or X? Oregon adds third option to driver’s licenses

FILE PHOTO: An employee of the advocacy group Basic Rights Oregon hands out stickers during an Oregon Driver and Motor Vehicle department public hearing on the rights of transgender people as the state considers adding a third gender choice to driver's licenses and identification cards, in Portland, Oregon, May 10, 2017. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester/File Photo

By Terray Sylvester

(Reuters) – Oregon on Thursday became the first U.S. state to allow residents to identify as neither male nor female on state driver’s licenses, a decision that transgender advocates called a victory for civil rights.

Under a policy unanimously adopted by the Oregon Transportation Commission, residents can choose to have an “X,” for non-specified, displayed on their driver’s license or identification cards rather than an “M” for male or “F” for female.

The policy change was cheered by supporters as a major step in expanding legal recognition and civil rights for people who do not identify as male or female. This includes individuals with both male and female anatomies, people without a gender identity and those who identify as a different gender than listed on their birth certificate.

The state’s Driver and Motor Vehicle Services Division expects to start offering the option in July.

“I very much plan to head to the nearest DMV and ask for that ID to be corrected on July 3rd,” said Jamie Shupe, an Army veteran who successfully petitioned for the non-binary gender option. “And then I’ll no doubt stand out front of the building, or sit in the car, and cry.”

Transgender rights have become a flashpoint across the United States after some states, including North Carolina, have tried to restrict transgender people’s use of public bathrooms.

At the end of May, a federal court ruled that a transgender boy must be allowed to use the boys’ bathrooms at his high school in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The decision in Oregon comes a year after a Portland circuit court judge granted a request by Shupe to change gender from female to a third, nongender option.

That 2016 ruling prompted state officials to examine how to allow a third option in the state’s computer systems and how such a change would interact with the state’s gender laws.

During public hearings on the change, most comments were in favor, according to a summary by DMV officials.

A handful of people questioned the need for the third option and expressed concern that the change would complicate police officers’ efforts to identify people.

Having the third option on legal documentation can help reduce discrimination and raise awareness of “the spectrum of gender identity,” said Diane Goodwin, spokeswoman for Basic Rights Oregon, an advocacy group that campaigned for the “X” option.

Nearly one-third of transgender people who showed an ID with a name or gender that did not match their perceived gender reported harassment, discrimination or assault, according to a 2015 survey of more than 20,000 people in all states.

A DMV spokesman added the agency has no estimate of how many people might apply for the new IDs.

(Reporting by Terray Sylvester in Hood River, Oregon; Writing by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Texas House passes ‘bathroom bill’ targeting public schools

The U.S flag and the Texas State flag fly over the Texas State Capitol in Austin,

By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – The Texas House of Representatives gave formal approval on Monday to a bill that would restrict bathroom access for transgender students in public schools, a measure that critics say promotes discrimination against such children.

The state’s Republican-controlled legislature has been at the forefront in advancing measures seen by backers as protecting traditional values and religious liberty but criticized by civil rights groups as eroding protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, people.

The Texas House gave preliminary approval on Sunday night to the bill, which requires public school students to use bathrooms, changing facilities and locker rooms that match their biological sex, not the gender with which they identify.

The measure is narrower in scope than a bathroom bill passed along mostly party lines by the state Senate in March that extended to state universities and public buildings.

The Senate bill is similar to one enacted last year in North Carolina. The North Carolina law prompted economic boycotts and the loss of sporting events, and was later revamped in the face of criticism.

The more limited House measure is seen as a way to avoid an economic backlash in Texas, analysts said.

“It is absolutely about child safety,” Republican state Representative Chris Paddie, who managed the bill, said in House debate on Sunday.

The measure heads back to the Senate for consideration of changes made since it was in that chamber. Republican Governor Greg Abbott has said he supports a bathroom bill.

Critics said the House and Senate versions undermined civil rights and used children as political pawns.

“There is no moral middle ground on discrimination, ” said Kathy Miller, president of the civil liberties advocacy group Texas Freedom Network.

The legislature on Monday also sent to the governor a bill allowing adoption agencies to reject families on religious grounds, an action slammed by critics as discriminatory against LGBT Texans and non-Christians.

LGBT rights groups said they would challenge the adoption bill in court if it became law, arguing discrimination in the name of religion had no place in the state.

The bill’s backers, which include several Christian groups, said it banned no one and had a mechanism for the state government to offer alternative adoption providers if any service is denied for religious beliefs.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)