Gov. signs “harmful” law forcing trans students to use outdoor porta-potties

[Jessica_Rose ✅]

Gov. signs "harmful" law forcing trans students to use outdoor porta-potties

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/05/gov-signs-harmful-law-forcing-trans-students-to-use-outdoor-porta-potties/ 🔗

Greg Owen (19 May 2026)

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) signed the latest anti-trans bill to come out of the red state legislature. The law, which McMaster signed last Friday, will banish transgender students who want to use public school restrooms to use porta-potties outside school buildings instead.

House Bill 4756, entitled "the South Carolina Student Physical Privacy Act," requires multi-person bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities in public K-12 schools and public colleges in the state to be designated for use by one sex only. Sex in the bill is defined as biological sex observed or verified at birth, ABC Columbia reports.

The law allows trans students to use single-occupancy restrooms, but if the school lacks one, schools can designate porta-potties outside as a single-occupancy restroom. Since state law forbids trans students from using school restrooms that align with their gender identity — and some trans students are fearful of using restrooms that do not — the new law forces them to use these temporary outdoor restrooms.

Republican lawmakers, however, have deemed porta-potties a suitable alternative to restrooms inside public school buildings, casting trans students outside if they request the accommodation in a latter-day "separate but equal" attack on trans rights.

House Bill 4756 "requires every public school, college, and university in the state to provide a single-user restroom – deeming porta potties as an acceptable single-user restroom option," the Campaign for Southern Equality (CSE) wrote on Instagram ahead of McMaster signing the law.

One Instagram commenter replied, "Segregation. It's not about the bathrooms, just like it wasn't about the water fountains. It's about discrimination."