Faye Seidler, a suicide prevention advocate, testifies March 24, 2025, against a bill that would require state entities to only refer to individuals by their sex assigned at birth in official documentation. (Mary Steurer/North Dakota Monitor)
By: Mary Steurer
BISMARCK, N.D. (North Dakota Monitor) – Schools don’t see all-gender bathrooms as a problem, West Fargo Public Schools Business Manager Levi Bachmeier told lawmakers Monday morning.
The North Dakota Senate is considering passing House Bill 1144, which would make unisex bathrooms illegal in K-12 public schools.
Proponents of the bill say the proposal is necessary to protect students’ privacy.
“I believe this bill is urgently needed because of the environment that we have children in now, women and girls have valid concerns about privacy and safety in independent spaces,” said Linda Thorson, state director of Concerned Women for America of North Dakota.
Originally, the bill stated that all bathrooms “must be designated for use exclusively for males or exclusively for females,” and prohibited multi-stall gender neutral restrooms.
An amendment to the proposal adopted by the House also forbids all-gender single-occupancy restrooms. If adopted into law, the bill would make it illegal for male and female restrooms to share a communal sink or entry area, as well.
Bachmeier said West Fargo Public Schools did not take issue with the original bill, but opposes the recent amendment.
West Fargo Public Schools has all-gender, single stall bathrooms in multiple schools “because they provide greater privacy, stronger supervision, and improved safety for all learners,” Bachmeier said in written testimony on the bill. They also have camera-monitored communal sinks outside the bathrooms, he said.
According to Bachmeier, students and teachers don’t see these kinds of restrooms as a privacy threat. He said this setup has reduced many behavioral problems that schools see in traditional single-sex, multi-stall bathrooms, like vaping, selling drugs, fights and truancy.
“The concerns in our schools about what’s going on in the bathrooms has very little to do with most of the testimony that has been shared so far this morning,” he said.
By eliminating unisex, single occupancy bathrooms, House Bill 1144 would make West Fargo Schools less safe, Bachmeier said.
House Bill 1144 seeks to build on a bill adopted in 2023 that, among other things, prevents transgender students from using bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender.
The bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Bill Tveit, R-Hazen, said his proposal is needed to fully implement the 2023 law.
In addition to adding more bathroom restrictions, it requires the Attorney General’s Office to investigate potential violations of the statute reported by concerned parents. Courts could fine schools found in non-compliance up to $2,500 per violation.
The House passed House Bill 1144 in February with more than 80% support.
Opponents of the bill have testified that the additional restrictions on bathroom design would force schools to spend millions to renovate their facilities.
Aimee Copas, executive director of the North Dakota Council of Educational Leaders, told lawmakers that by her estimate the bill would cost public schools $140 million to $200 million.
Rep. Kathy Frelich, R-Devils Lake, on Monday said she is proposing an amendment to make it so the bill’s restrictions would only apply to new schools, so old schools wouldn’t have to undergo costly renovations.
“We cannot, in good conscience, force taxpayers to bear the financial burden of retrofitting schools that have already made significant investments in their facilities,” she said.
In 2023, Fargo Public Schools Superintendent Rupak Gandhi told the Fargo School Board the state law may be in violation of federal law and said the district planned to prioritize what’s best for students, The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reported.
Some parents and school staff said in testimony that access to safe bathrooms is already a significant obstacle for many transgender youth, with some refusing to use school restrooms altogether.
Twenty percent of transgender middle schoolers who completed the 2023 North Dakota Youth Risk Behavior Survey reported not drinking water, according to an analysis by suicide prevention advocate Faye Seidler and the Harbor Health Initiative. Some transgender students avoid drinking water as a way to cut down on bathroom usage.
The committee on Monday also heard testimony on House Bill 1181, which would require state-funded entities to refer to people by their sex as determined at birth. In other words, those entities wouldn’t be allowed to recognize the gender identity of transgender individuals. A similar bill failed during the 2023 session.
House Bill 1181, sponsored by Rep. SuAnn Olson, R-Baldwin, would apply to all “policies, records, forms, rules, standards, procedures, guides, materials, instruction, training, correspondence, advertising, or marketing used by a public school, an institution under the control of the state board of higher education, or a state agency or office, unless otherwise required by federal law,” according to the bill.
Olson has called her proposal a “common sense” bill that is “scientifically honest.”
She also said that the bill would bring state law into alignment with federal policy. In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a two-gender policy for the federal government.
“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female,” Trump said during his inauguration speech.
Sen. Josh Boschee, D-Fargo, asked Olson how the bill would accommodate intersex people.
“When we put something in Century Code, we make black and white laws for a gray world,” he said.
Olson replied that intersex conditions are rare and that people born with them usually lean female or male.
A study published in 2000 found that about 1.7% of people are intersex, though the federal government doesn’t collect data on these demographics.
The bill previously tied sex to one’s chromosomes, and included a provision that would allow an individual’s gender or sex to be checked with a DNA test. This language was removed from the bill in the House.
In Monday testimony against the bill, Seidler, the suicide prevention advocate, said that science does not support a binary view of biological sex. Each individual has chromosomal, hormonal and anatomical sex characteristics, she said.
“Biology is amazing and fascinating and complex,” Seidler said. “It is a spectrum. There’s a lot of ways we can exist on it.”
Seidler said that she worries passing this bill will bring further harm to transgender people in North Dakota, who already face discrimination in the state.
Seidler’s analysis of 2023 North Dakota Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that 74% of transgender middle schoolers in who took the survey said they had seriously considered suicide, almost four times as many as their straight peers. About 40% of transgender high schoolers said they had seriously considered suicide, about three times as many their straight peers.
“Everything we do to exclude individuals from a culture or community is a risk factor that increases suicide,” Seidler said. “Everything we do to make someone feel more belonged is a protective factor that will reduce suicide.”
Carter Gill, vice president of governmental affairs for the North Dakota University System’s student association, also spoke against the bill.
“This bill essentially does two things regarding higher education: makes the lives of trans students currently in the NDUS harder and stands as a message to out-of-state trans students that they are not welcome in North Dakota,” he said.
The committee as of Monday had not taken action on House Bill 1144 or House Bill 1181.
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