Fox News Promotes More “Bathroom Panic” Over Law Protecting Transgender Students

Fox News continued its attack on a California law granting transgender students access to appropriate school facilities by touting the wildly exaggerated fears of a transphobic California lawmaker.

During the August 19 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy interviewed California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-33), who claims to have recently pulled one of his sons out of public school in response to the passage of the student non-discrimination law. 

During the segment - which opened with Fox's classic "P.C. Police" intro - Donnelly warned that the measure would make students uncomfortable by forcing them to be “naked in front of someone that you might want to ask out”:

Doocy expressed agreement with Donnelly's criticism, touting an effort to repeal the law through a referendum and even reading from a WND column in which Donnelly stoked fears that California's law might “increase the likelihood of sexual assault on campus.”

Donnelly's criticisms of the law recycled the same baseless talking points Fox News has been using to attack the measure for the past few weeks: the law will lead to inappropriate behavior, violates students' privacy rights, will increase bullying, etc.

But none of these fears have come true in the California school districts that have already implemented similar policies, a fact that Donnelly attempted to dismiss near the end of the segment:

DONNELLY: Now we have government interference. We're basically having the government come in. And they claimed that this worked in San Francisco and LA.

DOOCY: Right.

DONNELLY: Well, I have a simple question: what's working in San Francisco and LA?

Doocy was more interested in promoting Donnelly's paranoid, hypothetical fears about the law than in reporting the actual, real success of similar measures in other schools.

As usual, right-wing “bathroom panic” about transgender people is based more in conjecture and wild predictions than actual empirical evidence.