Sen. Greg Razer, D-Kansas City, offers amendments to a bill that would bar transgender students from restrooms aligning with their gender identity in the Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee Tuesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
Legislation seeking to create a “parents bill of rights” in Missouri was amended in committee Tuesday morning to add prohibitions on transgender students accessing restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.
A House hearing on standalone bills that sought to regulate school bathrooms took up the majority of a nearly nine-hour meeting last week. Missourians haven’t had a chance to testify on bathroom restrictions in the Senate this year, a fact that irked Democrats as the committee’s chairman — Republican Sen. Andrew Koenig of Manchester — briefly introduced the amendment.
Koenig added the bathroom amendment shortly before he was removed as chairman of the education committee. He lost his chairmanship Tuesday along with other members of the Senate’s Freedom Caucus following weeks of open warfare with the chamber’s GOP leadership.