NEWS

Poll: Ohio divided on transgender bathrooms

Chrissie Thompson
cthompson@enquirer.com

Ohio voters are closely divided on whether to allow transgender people to choose which public restroom they want to use.

And they don’t think public schools should have to permit transgender students to pick a bathroom of their choosing.

Forty-eight percent of Ohio voters told pollsters from Quinnipiac University that transgender people shouldn’t be permitted to use the public restroom they choose, while 43 percent supported allowing it.

That’s a statistical tie, since the survey has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Fifty-five percent of Ohio voters opposed and 36 percent supported requiring public schools to follow federal guidelines that say transgender students should be able to use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity.

Last month, following the passage in North Carolina of a law restricting access to restrooms and locker rooms, President Barack Obama’s administration sent guidance to the nation’s public educators.

Schools, the letter said, must treat transgender students in a way that matches their gender identity, even if their education records or identity documents indicate a different sex.

Failure to do so, such as by requiring the use of a separate bathroom, discriminates against those students based on their sex, the letter from the administration said.

Quinnipiac asked voters in the three historically most-important swing states – Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania – about rules governing bathroom use. Voters in all three states were closely divided on whether to allow transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. All three states' polls showed an opposition to a federal transgender-bathroom mandate in schools.

Quinnipiac pollsters called 971 registered Ohio voters on cellphones and landlines from June 8-19.

Editor's note: The text and headline of this article have been updated to reflect that Ohioans are divided on the issue due to the closeness of the results and the overlapping margins of error.