"Battery Club Bathrooms"
Daily Blog - 06 October 2025 - "Battery Club Bathrooms"
NYCLU challenges Massapequa School District's transgender bathroom policy
By Kevin Vesey, News 12 Long Island, 10/4/2025
A new policy passed by the Massapequa School Board has sparked legal challenges and community debate over the rights of transgender students and their access to school facilities.
The school district recently adopted a resolution requiring students to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender assigned at birth. Critics, including the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), say the policy is not only discriminatory but also violates state law.
Utah School Solution - Battery Club Bathrooms
Utah schools seem to have addressed the bathroom problem faced by the Massapequa School District (MSD) by installing "Battery Club Bathrooms." I use the term "Battery Club" because I first saw this bathroom configuration while attending a meeting at the Battery Club in San Francisco ten years ago.
Battery Club bathroom configuration: One large, open entryway into a common room with a line-up of sinks and mirrors behind which were some fifteen, lockable, individual, fully enclosed (ie. no space to see into the stall), rooms, each containing a traditional western toilet. All individuals, irrespective of gender, would take care of business in this one area. Nearby Park City, UT High School has recently installed a Battery Club Bathroom configuration in a new construction. Kids have the option to not use this configuration as a traditional boys and girls bathroom set-up exists on the other side of the school.
Pros and Cons of Battery Club Bathrooms
1. Battery Club bathrooms alter the male/female restroom social interaction paradigm by taking away the ability for same sexes, males and females, to use a restroom with members of the same sex only. After doing my thing at the Battery Club, washing my hands at a sink where a woman was putting on her makeup at the sink/mirror next to me was mildly disconcerting if not a civilization ending event. Would not many women feel uncomfortable using a tampon dispenser in the presence of males? Shouldn't males and females have their own spaces when "taking care of business?"
2. There are no urinals. Public stalls with toilet bowls are dirty even if one doesn't sit. Sanitary use requires one to lift the seat and flush with the foot. It's a male thing, for sure. But do girls like to enter a closed stall previously used by careless boys with a bad aim? Eliminating the proven, more sanitary, if not anatomically correct, practice of using urinals to ease the feelings of a small minority of people... has this had balanced public discussion?
3. My daughter-in-law has two fifteen-year-old boys, our grandsons, who attend a newly built Utah high school with a Battery Club Bathroom. While acknowledging the gender fluidity issue, she notes that the principal rationale for the new configuration was to prevent bullying. Because of the open area of the washroom, kids can't bully others without doing so right in the open. My daughter in law accepts this explanation and has no problem with the new configuration.
Jury's Out
Considering all my inputs to date on Battery Club Bathrooms, I'm going to have to think on it some more. Tempest in a tea pot as we change with the times? Or ill-advised social change with unintended consequences coming down the road?
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Spock, "The Wrath of Khan."