President Donald Trump may have touched off a national revolution of common sense on transgender ideology, as yet another state has declared men should not have access to battered women’s shelters, restrooms, or changing areas.

West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey (R) signed the Riley Gaines Act (S.B. 456), which requires all domestic violence shelters, public schools, institutions of higher education, and correctional institutions to protect women from the encroachment of men who believe they are, or pose as, women. The bill aims to preserve women and girls’ “privacy and safety from acts of abuse, harassment, sexual assault, and violence committed by men.”

“There are only two sexes, and every individual is either male or female,” states the bill. It notes the two sexes “are not interchangeable” but possess “unique and immutable biological differences that manifest prior to birth.”

“West Virginia will not bow down to radical gender ideology,” said Morrissey at Wednesday morning’s bill signing ceremony, surrounded by female athletes of all ages. “We are going to lead with common sense, and the Riley Gaines Act does exactly that.”

The bill defines a “woman” as “an adult human of the female sex.” The legislation also legally defines the terms “man,” “boy,” ”girl,” “mother,” and “father.”

Thanks to this bill, “Everyone is speaking a common language that is no longer up for re-interpretation,” said the law’s namesake, Riley Gaines, who was in attendance. The former star University of Kentucky swimmer began a national campaign to preserve women’s sports after being forced to swim against, and undress in front of, William “Lia” Thomas.

The bill forbids men from serving time in female prisons, a rebuke to the Biden-Harris administration, which placed so many male inmates who said they identify as female in women’s prisons that, in January, 15% of inmates in female correctional facilities were men. President Trump ended the practice via executive order.

The West Virginia bill also mandates sex-specific beds for any “overnight trip involving public school students or state institution of higher education that sponsors or supervises an overnight trip,” excluding family members of the same sex. College students may cohabit with members of the opposite sex if both students agree in advance.

Officials in Jefferson County Public School District in Littleton, Colorado, initially forced 11-year-old Serena Wailes to share a bed with a trans-identified male classmate during her fifth grade class field trip to Washington, D.C., before yielding to her parents’ requests. In 2013, the Obama administration forced California’s Arcadia Unified School District to sign a resolution agreement allowing trans-identifying teens to sleep with their classmates on school trips.

“States have a duty to protect the privacy, safety, and dignity of women and girls. Letting men intrude into girls’ spaces where they are most vulnerable — whether in a changing space, sleeping quarters, or the restroom — is an invasion of privacy, a threat to their safety, and a denial of the real biological differences between the two sexes,” stated Sara Beth Nolan, legal counsel for the Center for Public Policy at Alliance Defending Freedom. “This will help protect young girls and women across the state for generations to come.”

The provision also applies to domestic violence shelters, although they may make a “reasonable accommodation” for someone who refuses to observe the sex distinction, as long as they do not allow that person access to sex-specific facilities while members of the opposite sex are present.

It also requires accuracy in collecting statistics on a state-mandated level. After Democrats stoked fears the bill would allow people to require people to expose their genitals, the legislature amended the bill. The provision clarifies that “nothing in this article shall be construed as authorizing an examination of a minor for purposes of determining the minor’s biological sex. The biological sex of a minor is determined by reference to the minor’s biological sex recorded at the minor’s time of birth.”

The State Senate passed the final, amended bill on Tuesday, 32-1. One of the chamber’s two Democrats, Senator Mike Woelfel (D-5), voted yea; the other, Senator Joey Garcia (D-13), cast the Senate’s lone no vote. The House of Delegates then approved the act on a party-line vote of 90-8.

Del. Mike Pushkin (D-54) condemned those who voted for the bill as “firmly planted on the wrong side of history.” Andrew Schneider, director of the statewide LGBTQ activist group “Fairness West Virginia,” insisted the bill “empowers a hateful but vocal minority.” Numerous polls show a lopsided majority of Americans support sex-specific sports and private spaces.

The passage gladdened female athletes, especially teenage girls forced to compete against or share a changing facility with a boy.

“Because of a policy that allowed a male athlete to use the girls’ locker rooms and restrooms at my school, I was exposed to sexual comments and had no choice but to change in a bathroom stall out of fear of being exposed to males in the locker room,” said Adelia Cross in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. The boy, who identified as transgender, subjected the teenage girl to “vile, sexual, threatening, and demeaning remarks,” according to Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented her. “Men and women are biologically different, and men don’t belong in girls’ spaces. Denying this truth only harms women and girls,” Cross told TWS.

“Thanks to Governor Morrisey and the West Virginia legislature, I no longer have to worry about facing sex-discrimination,” agreed Emily Salerno of Lincoln High School in Harrison County, who refused to compete against a male in a girls shot put competition.

The bill’s passage accomplished a legislative goal for the newly elected Republican governor, who called on state legislators to pass this act during his February 12 State of the State address (which Salerno and her parents attended). “Let’s restore common sense and fairness so Emmy, her teammates, and girls across the state have the right to their own competitions, locker rooms, and private spaces,” said Governor Morrissey. The issue has long motivated the governor. Then-Attorney General Morrissey supported Salerno by suing the Biden administration’s attempted rewrite of Title IX rules. Morrissey wrote an op-ed with Gaines on the Biden administration’s attempt to reinterpret Title IX as applying to “gender identity.”

The action also shows the reach of the Trump administration’s flurry of executive orders and actions, which the president says aim to restore “common sense.” President Trump’s executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which he signed on his first day in office, codified the official definition of “male” and “female”:

“‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.

“‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

On February 5, Trump signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” making it “the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy” by forcing females to compete against males.

Governor Morrissey attended the women’s sports signing event.

Other states have followed the president’s lead, as well. Indiana Governor Mike Braun (R) signed two executive orders on Tuesday defining sex under state law (executive order 25-36) and protecting the integrity of women’s sports (executive order 25-35). “Replacing the scientific fact of biological sex with the always-changing, self-reported idea of ‘gender identity’ has real consequences: it puts women in danger in female-only spaces like prisons, it destroys opportunities for women in sports, and it tells troubled kids that their mental health problems can be solved with sterilizing drugs and irreversible sex change operations,” said Braun. “Indiana will not go along with this radical new idea of what gender means.”

President Trump’s executive orders and commitment to biological reality have changed policies even in such Democratic strongholds as Washington state. The Moses Lake School District informed Governor Bob Ferguson (D) it intends to comply with the president’s order on female sports and facilities, despite the governor’s resistance. “We trust that your office will also uphold federal law, without allowing personal biases or differing viewpoints to jeopardize the Moses Lake School District’s Federal funding,” they encouraged the governor.