The South Carolina legislature failed to pass a North Carolina-style anti-transgender bathroom discrimination law, but GOP legislators in the state introduced a bill this week targeting a school district that implemented a transgender-inclusive policy.

Republican lawmakers throughout the South have introduced legislation that targets the transgender community and attempts to limit transgender people’s access to bathrooms and other facilities.

Several of the proposals have used similar language to a North Carolina GOP-backed law passed in March. When a South Carolina lawmaker introduced a similar bill in April, it was met with fierce opposition.

State Sen. Lee Bright (R-Spartanburg) introduced S 1203, which would have prohibited local municipalities from creating “local laws, ordinances, orders, or other regulations” that would “allow a person to use a multiple occupancy bathroom or changing facility regardless of the person’s biological sex.”

The measure would have prohibited government buildings and public schools from implementing a transgender-inclusive bathroom policy.

Bright said that he’s against “men who claim to be women” using the same restrooms as children, reported the Associated Press. “I don’t believe transgender people are pedophiles,” Bright said. “I think grown adult men would use this as protection to violate women in the restroom.”

Many of those who testified opposed the bill during a committee hearing.

Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin said the bill was an attack on transgender people that could come with negative economic consequences, reported Reuters. “This bill is an undisguised attack on some of our most talented and most vulnerable citizens,” Benjamin said.

The anti-transgender bill died in committee.

Lawmakers on the committee said they didn’t “need to make the mistakes” made by North Carolina Republicans, and Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said the law wasn’t necessary. 

“When I look at South Carolina, we look at our situations, we’re not hearing of anybody’s religious liberties that are being violated, and we’re again not hearing any citizens that feel like they’re being violated in terms of freedoms,” Haley said, reported the Washington Post.

Despite the failure of Bright’s bill, lawmakers still seem intent on creating discriminatory bathroom policy.

S 1306, sponsored by Sen. Lawrence Grooms (R-Charleston) and Sen. Paul Campbell (R-Goose Creek), would prohibit “a person of one sex” from using the restrooms, locker rooms, showers or any other facility “designated for use by the opposite sex.”

The law would apply to Berkeley County school facilities, located in the Charleston metropolitan area. Berkeley County this spring became South Carolina’s first public school district to implement a case-by-case transgender-inclusive bathroom policy.

Grooms told the Associated Press that his bill is intended to require the Berkeley County School District (BCSD) to follow the same policies as other school districts in the state. “What I’ve done for the children of Berkeley County and their parents is to give them some degree of stability about what the policies will be,” Grooms said.

BCSD spokesperson Katie Orvin told the Post and Courier that the school district does not have a written policy addressing bathroom usage.

“BCSD implements current anti-discrimination policies under the guidance of the U.S. Department of Education and in accordance with Title IX,” Orvin said.

The Berkeley County School Board held the BCSD decision after a public hearing and a closed-door meeting with the district’s legal counsel.

Board Chair Jim Hayes read a statement after the hearing, saying the school district would “maintain and respect the privacy rights of all its students” while permitting transgender students to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity.

“School administrators will continue to manage requests made by, or on behalf of, transgender students in reference to the use of restroom facilities for the remainder of the 2015-2016 school year in hopes of receiving a clearly defined direction from the Courts prior to the start of the upcoming school year,” the statement said.

Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, a national grassroots organization, told Rewire that the legislative movement targeting transgender people is “rooted in fear.”

“We have this more conservative legislature that really understands the power of using fear as a tactic to drive political wedges to further divide communities and further divide votes,” Simpson said. “This gives them an open door to move their agenda forward.”

Simpson said that attempts to target the transgender community is part of a larger strategy of targeting marginalized people.

“How can we believe our legislators have our best interests at heart, if you are going to publicly and intentionally do something that is attacking the vulnerable of our society?” Simpson said.