Back in January 2015, a law was proposed in Kentucky that would award students $2,500 for reporting on Transgender students using what in reality is actually their proper restroom, and the Kentucky’s Republican Senate seriously considered it.
The bill’s stated intent was to restrict trans students’ access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and other gender-segregated facilities on school campuses.
The bill was passed in the Republican led senate on February 23 within days of its having been passed by the Senate Education Committee when the sole Democratic member was out of the room.
The Democrat-controlled Kentucky House of Representatives refused to hear the bill.
Among the usual objections to the buzz words “biological sex” as determined by “a student’s chromosomes and anatomy at birth”, the bill also suggested the separate but unequal approach that, because non-Trans students sharing a bathroom with Trans students would suffer “psychological, emotional, and physical harm, they could use a single-stall, unisex bathroom. That would, apparently, in no way be noticed by other students, especially those prone to bullying.
There was even an attempt to guarantee its passage by offering the rejected bill as an amendment to a house bill that actually dealt with choosing school superintendents. Failing as an amendment, the bill died.
For now.
The bill would have students spying on each other, or just making any random kid’s life miserable by making the charge, spreading the word about it, and setting that kid up for bullying for the rest of his or her time at that school.
It would be a new form of bullying.
Heck, an enterprising student could even push a cisgender kid into the wrong bathroom so they could accuse him or her of attempting to use the wrong restroom so they could claim they were traumatized and get the reward.
Kentucky wanted to establish the practice of the state paying private citizens to spy on other citizens.
In this case, the bill died.
But, in Texas right now, the bill that would institute a vigilante-for-pay practice of people spying on each other for financial gain has been allowed to go unchallenged by the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative Justices, two who have strong charges of sexual harassment going against them, and one who wandered off the set of A Handmaid’s Tale.
In a State whose infrastructure was proven weak as flood waters have inundated cities and towns in 500 year floods that now happen biennially and an electric grid failing when it was most needed, the coldest days on record, while being on the low end of the scale when it comes to baby wellness checks, clinical infant care, child health care, and school funding per child, but the high end when it comes to the number of uninsured women, maternal mortality, and child hunger, Texas now has a law that entices everyone to become paid Vagilantes.
Making any abortion after the sixth week illegal certainly adds much to the already existing duties of the government, making it almost impossible to enforce. To avoid that, the bill allows private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps someone get an abortion after that deadline, and that person can be anyone not even connected to someone who had an abortion or to a provider.
As it was, a complaint about someone having an abortion or providing one would have to be brought to the state because of already existing restrictive anti-abortion measures which would then get around to dealing with it when able with red tape slowing down the process and keeping the number of suits low.
Now private citizens, as the self-appointed morality police can go for the gold by filing a direct suit without the state’s red tape, and stand to win at least $10,000, as well as costs for attorney’s fees, depending on the case’s outcome.
And they can go after anyone they considered helped from the provider to the Uber driver who took the fare as well as family members, abortion funds, rape crisis counselors and other medical professionals.
The law also lets a person file a lawsuit against an abortion clinic in their home county and stop the case from being transferred to a different venue. Transfers take the local attention away from the local quasi-celebrity. It also allows the accuser to choose a favorable court in which to file the lawsuit.
If any counter suits are filed, the state is out of the process and it is man-y-mano among the citizenry for the prize money.
In the competition of whose laws will allow private citizens to make money from spying on their neighbors, so far Texas has won over Kentucky, but Kentucky Transgender kids, don’t celebrate too early. I am sure this will end up only the first entry into what will become a tournament bracket.
In some states this will become a potential source of riches, Instant Trickle Down, along with the state lottery.
And there will be do-overs.
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