SC Considers Outdoor Single-Occupancy Drinking Fountains, Doorways
Jim Crow is back, baby! A modest extension of the South Carolina Student Physical Privacy Act.
Building on the historic passage of House Bill 4756, which on May 15, 2026, established the outdoor portable toilet as a constitutionally sufficient sanitary accommodation for transgender students in South Carolina’s public schools and colleges, the SC General Assembly is reportedly weighing a broad expansion of the law to cover the remaining shared facilities of student life.
A draft companion bill, tentatively titled the Student Physical Privacy Act (Comprehensive Facilities Modernization), would extend the porta-potty framework to drinking fountains, classroom doorways, library seating, the cafeteria food line, hallway lockers, the school bus, the gymnasium bleachers, the auditorium, the parking lot, the marching band, and any patch of grass on which two or more students might conceivably stand within four feet of one another.
A source close to the drafting committee, speaking on condition of anonymity because the source is a composite of every press release issued by the bill’s sponsors over the past eighteen months, explained the underlying principle.
“We are protecting the privacy of our daughters,” the source said. “If a transgender student can be safely accommodated by a single-user portable restroom located on the lawn outside the science wing, it follows logically that she can also be safely accommodated by a single-user portable drinking fountain located on the lawn outside the science wing. Frankly, we should have thought of this in January.”
1. Drinking Fountains
Under the draft expansion, every K – 12 school and public college in South Carolina would be required to designate its existing drinking fountains as “sex-aligned at birth,” with usage restricted to “biological sex, either male or female, as observed or clinically verified at the moment of first hydration.”
For students whose hydration needs cannot be accommodated within the sex-aligned fountain network, the bill provides three options, taken verbatim from the porta-potty statute and ported into the fountain context with minimal editorial changes:
(a) a single-user indoor drinking fountain, where available;
(b) temporary exclusive use of a multi-user drinking fountain, scheduled between regular periods and supervised by a staff member trained in sex-observation; or
(c) a single-user outdoor portable drinking fountain, defined for purposes of this section as a five-gallon plastic cooler positioned no fewer than fifteen feet from any school structure and clearly marked with signage reading STUDENT HYDRATION ACCOMMODATION.
Districts that fail to comply forfeit 25% of state operating appropriations. A private cause of action with attorney’s fees is available to any cisgender student who “encounters a person of the opposite sex” at a designated drinking fountain, regardless of whether the encounter involves the actual sharing of water, eye contact, or even mutual awareness.
A spokesperson for the bill stressed that the outdoor cooler is not a punishment. “It’s an accommodation,” she said. “Coolers are a normal part of summer. We have them at picnics. The students should consider it a kind of perpetual picnic.”
When asked whether the cooler would be heated in January, the spokesperson said the bill is “agnostic on weather.”
2. Doorways
The doorway provision is the section that constitutional scholars are watching most closely.
Under the current statutory architecture, every classroom door in South Carolina is a multi-occupancy facility: two students may pass through it simultaneously. The draft bill identifies this as an “unaddressed privacy exposure” and proposes the following remedy.
Each classroom door shall be designated by sex at birth. Students entering or exiting must do so individually, in compliance with their designated doorway. For students who cannot be accommodated within a sex-aligned doorway network, for example, those whose classrooms are accessible only by a single shared entrance, the school shall provide:
(a) a separate single-user doorway, where construction permits;
(b) temporary exclusive use of the shared doorway, with cisgender students cleared from the corridor for a minimum of ninety seconds before and after the accommodated student’s passage; or
(c) a single-user outdoor doorway, defined as a freestanding doorframe installed on the lawn, through which the accommodated student may symbolically enter the school building from approximately thirty yards away.
The single-user outdoor doorway must be clearly marked and may not be sheltered. The bill’s sponsors have indicated that any roof over the freestanding doorframe would “defeat the accommodative purpose.”
3. Library Seating
The library section of the bill draws on what its sponsors describe as a “well-documented body of research” concerning the privacy interests of cisgender students seated within four feet of a transgender peer. The well-documented body of research has not been produced. When asked to identify it, the bill’s lead sponsor said it was “common sense” and “the kind of thing you don’t need to put in a footnote.”
Under the draft expansion, library seating shall be designated by sex at birth. Tables and study carrels shall be labeled accordingly. Students requiring accommodation shall be offered:
(a) a single-user indoor study room, where available;
(b) temporary exclusive use of the library, scheduled outside of regular operating hours; or
(c) a single-user outdoor library seat, defined as a folding metal chair positioned on the lawn outside the library window, from which the accommodated student may borrow books through a sliding tray installed in the wall.
The bill provides that the outdoor library seat shall be inspected annually for rust.
4. The Cafeteria Food Line
The cafeteria provisions are extensive. They address the food line, the cashier, the salad bar, the milk cooler, the silverware station, the napkin dispenser, and the trays themselves, each of which is reclassified as a “shared touchpoint facility” subject to sex-aligned designation.
Of particular interest is the bill’s treatment of the lunch tray. A lunch tray, the drafter’s note, is a multi-occupancy facility insofar as a single tray can be touched in sequence by a student, the lunch worker, a second student waiting behind the first, and the dishwasher. To prevent privacy disruption, the bill establishes a single-user outdoor cafeteria, defined as a card table on the lawn near the dumpsters, where accommodated students may receive their meals through a hatch.
The outdoor cafeteria shall be staffed at all times by an adult who shall verify the accommodated student’s sex at birth before issuing any food item. Failure to verify shall result in a 25% reduction in cafeteria budget.
5. The School Bus
The bus is, for purposes of South Carolina law, a multi-occupancy mobile facility.
Under the draft expansion, school buses shall be designated by sex at birth. Students unable to be accommodated within the sex-aligned bus network shall be offered:
(a) a single-user school bus, where the district fleet permits;
(b) temporary exclusive use of a shared bus, with cisgender students removed from the route until the accommodated student has been delivered; or
(c) a single-user outdoor school bus, defined as a bicycle, which the accommodated student shall be expected to ride to school from any distance up to forty-five miles.
The bicycle must be sex-neutral. The bill specifies that pink bicycles are prohibited for accommodated students assigned male at birth, and blue bicycles are prohibited for accommodated students assigned female at birth, “to prevent the appearance of state endorsement of gender ideology.”
6. The Marching Band
The marching band section, drafted by a subcommittee on School Spirit and Traditional Values, recognizes that the marching band is among the most intensely shared facilities in any South Carolina public school. Band members travel together, change together, eat together, and on occasion sleep on the bus together. The privacy exposures are, in the bill’s language, “manifold.”
Accommodated students shall be permitted to participate in the marching band under the following conditions:
(a) The student shall march in a separate line, parallel to but no fewer than fifteen yards from the main formation;
(b) The student’s instrument shall be issued separately from the main equipment locker, in a single-user instrument closet designated for the purpose.
(c) where (a) and (b) are not feasible, the student shall be assigned to a single-user outdoor marching band, defined as marching alone in a circle on the lawn during halftime, audible to but not visible to the crowd.
The single-user outdoor marching band may be amplified through a freestanding speaker.
7. The Patch of Grass
The bill’s omnibus provision is its most ambitious. It anticipates the privacy exposures the foregoing sections do not address: the hallway, the staircase, the playground, the courtyard, the sidewalk, the bus stop, the front lawn, the back lawn, and any patch of grass on which two or more students might conceivably stand within four feet of one another.
For each such location, the bill establishes by reference a single-user outdoor accommodation, defined as the area not currently occupied by any cisgender student. Accommodated students shall be required to maintain a minimum buffer of four feet from any cisgender peer at all times during the school day, the school year, and any school-sponsored event.
The buffer shall be self-policed. The Department of Education shall provide each accommodated student with a tape measure.
8. Implementation Timeline
The bill’s implementation timeline assumes a phased rollout.
In year one, districts shall install outdoor porta-potties (already complete under HB 4756). In year two, districts shall install outdoor drinking fountains. In year three, doorways. In year four, library seats. In year five, the cafeteria. By year six, every shared touchpoint in the South Carolina public school system shall have been reclassified, segregated, and replicated outdoors at sex-aligned distance.
The bill estimates total implementation cost at approximately $1.4 billion over six years, to be drawn from the existing K – 12 capital budget. A fiscal-impact statement notes that the funds currently allocated to indoor plumbing, indoor furniture, indoor doors, indoor lighting, and indoor air conditioning will be “reprioritized as appropriate.”
9. The Empirical Predicate
The bill, like its predecessor, rests on a documented harm.
The harm is documented in the same sense that the harm underlying HB 4756 is documented: it is referenced in floor debate by a senator from York County, with reference to a school district whose police log, disciplinary record, and court filings do not contain the incident described.
The peer-reviewed literature continues to record the inverse pattern. Sixteen percent of trans youth who avoid public restrooms report urinary tract infections (DeChants et al., 2024). Thirty-six percent of trans students subjected to restroom restriction report sexual assault within the prior twelve months (Murchison et al., 2019). Trans youth with access to a gender-aligned bathroom are less likely to attempt suicide than those without (Price-Feeney et al., 2021). No peer-reviewed study, in any U.S. state, in any year, has documented an increase in cisgender student safety incidents attributable to trans-inclusive facility access (Hasenbush et al., 2018; Williams Institute, 2025).
The draft expansion does not address the peer-reviewed literature. The peer-reviewed literature is not common sense.
10. A Final Note from the Drafting Committee
The committee acknowledges that the expansion, when read in sequence, may appear extreme.
The committee asks readers to consider that the porta-potty provision in HB 4756 also appeared extreme in February 2026, when the Senate Education Committee first floated it. The provision is now law. The five-gallon cooler on the science-wing lawn, the freestanding doorframe in the parking lot, the folding metal chair outside the library window, the card table by the dumpsters, the bicycle, the parallel marching line, and the four-foot tape measure are simply the porta-potty’s logical extensions.
If the porta-potty is a constitutionally sufficient accommodation for a transgender fourteen-year-old in need of a bathroom, the cooler is a constitutionally sufficient accommodation for a transgender fourteen-year-old in need of a drink. If the cooler is, the doorframe is. If the doorframe is, the bicycle is. If the bicycle is, the tape measure is.
The committee invites the General Assembly to apply the principle consistently.
For a deeper dive, you can access the original research papers at Zenodo.
Grace Ann Hansen is an independent researcher and writer based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. All interpretation, argument, and prose are her own. The legal, constitutional, and public-health analysis underlying this satire is documented in her companion paper, “Outdoor Sanitation as Statutory Punishment: A Constitutional, Public-Health, and Dignity Analysis of South Carolina House Bill 4756” (May 2026). All factual claims about HB 4756, including the porta-potty provision (S.C. Code Ann. § 59–23–510(8)(c), 2026 S.C. Acts R202), are accurate. The draft expansion is not. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Grace Ann Hansen at grace@graceannhansen.com.
References
DeChants, J. P., Price, M. N., Green, A. E., Davis, C. K., & Nath, R. (2024). Transgender and nonbinary young people’s bathroom avoidance and mental health. International Journal of Transgender Health, 26(2), 351 – 359. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2024.2335512
Hasenbush, A., Flores, A. R., & Herman, J. L. (2018). Gender identity nondiscrimination laws in public accommodations: A review of evidence regarding safety and privacy in public restrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 16(1), 70 – 83. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-018-0335-z
Murchison, G. R., Agénor, M., Reisner, S. L., & Watson, R. J. (2019). School restroom and locker room restrictions and sexual assault risk among transgender youth. Pediatrics, 143(6), e20182902. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2018-2902
Price-Feeney, M., Green, A. E., & Dorison, S. H. (2021). Impact of bathroom discrimination on mental health among transgender and nonbinary youth. Journal of Adolescent Health, 68(6), 1142 – 1147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.11.001
S.C. Code Ann. § 59–23–510 to -570 (2026), as added by 2026 S.C. Acts R202 (H4756). https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess126_2025-2026/bills/4756.htm
Williams Institute. (2025). Safety and privacy in public restrooms and other gendered facilities (J. L. Herman, A. R. Flores, & E. Redfield). UCLA School of Law. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/safety-in-restrooms-and-facilites/