Enforcing the bathroom bill

It is all very well that the Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed the “bathroom bill.” But the real problem here is enforcement. Who is going to see to it that young students of the wrong sex do not sneak into bathrooms all over the state? We certainly cannot just leave this to teachers to enforce, they are not officers of the law. The public has a right to demand that entrances to all school bathrooms are guarded by police officers during all school hours. The officers must be empowered to check identification. After all, cross dressing teens could sneak by the officer into the girls (or boys) bathroom making a mockery of this important law.

The law specifies that the sex registered on the birth certificate determines bathroom use. Most children lack driver's licenses or passports, and so the only reasonable identification is a valid birth certificate. Obviously officers cannot stop only suspicious students. Imagine the trauma of a Junior High girl being stopped at the bathroom door and told she is so ugly that she must really be a boy. Such profiling would be catastrophic at such a tender age. Fairness dictates that all students should present birth certificates at each bathroom. Without rigorous enforcement the bathroom bill will a farce, ignored by students and teachers alike. I ask all Iowans to demand police enforcement at every school bathroom on every day.

David Sheff

North Liberty