Bathroom bill

Proponents of the bills argue that such legislation is necessary to maintain privacy, protect modesty held by most cisgender people, prevent voyeurism, assault, molestation, and rape[2], and ensure psychological comfort.

Departments of Justice and Education stating that schools which receive federal money must treat a student's gender identity as their sex (for example, in regard to bathrooms).

In a landmark 2013 case, the Colorado Civil Rights Division ruled in favor of six-year-old transgender student Coy Mathis to use the girls' bathroom at her elementary school.

[24] In October 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up the case of Gavin Grimm, a transgender male student who was barred from using the boys' bathrooms at his high school in Gloucester County, Virginia.

[26] In February 2016, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, adopted an ordinance which, it said, was intended to allow transgender persons a right to access bathrooms according to gender identity.

[32] Moreover, advocates, including LGBTQ rights organizations, have reported instances of businesses in North Carolina enforcing toilet restrictions on transgender customers.

[33] In 2016, Mississippi also limited public toilet usage through the enactment of a law that protects religious beliefs, citing: "male (man) or female (woman) refers to an individual's immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth", which does not consider transgender and intersex people.

[35] In November 2024, Representative Nancy Mace introduced a resolution to ban transgender people from using bathrooms other than those of their sex assigned at birth at the U.S. Capitol, in anticipation of the swearing in of U.S. House member-elect Sarah McBride from Delaware, who is the first openly trans woman elected to Congress.

[44][45] A 2018 study in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law finds that "there is no current evidence that granting transgender individuals access to gender-corresponding restrooms results in an increase in sexual offenses".

Title VII, passed as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibits discrimination in the workplace "because of" race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Several state bills are based on and closely resemble model legislation provided by the conservative lobbying organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which has been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBT hate group.

[57][58][59] The ADF's model legislation proposes giving any public school or university student the right to sue for $2,500 for each time they encountered a transgender classmate in a locker room or bathroom.

[67] The bill, if passed, would require attendants to be present in mixed-gender public bathrooms "to monitor the appropriate use of the rest room and answer any questions or concerns posed by users."

The bill's primary sponsor was Scott Stadthagen and "requires public K-12 schools to designate use of rooms where students may be in various stages of undress on the basis of biological sex".

The measure defines the term sex as "An individual's immutable biological condition of being male or female, as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at the time of birth.

Additionally, a student who encounters a person of the opposite sex in a restroom may have a cause of action against the school and may sue to "recover monetary damages for all psychological, emotional and physical harm suffered.

[92] Legislation has also been proposed in California that "requires...private buildings open to the public, as specified, to maintain at least one safe, sanitary, and convenient baby diaper changing station that is accessible to women and men".

The bill died after public protests over the legislation's provision allowing students to sue their school if they encountered a transgender person in a bathroom or locker room.

A study of Massachusetts cities that enacted a similar ban in the two years before the 2016 statewide nondiscrimination law took effect found it had no impact on the rate of bathroom crimes, which were rare to begin with.

[119] Notably, an exception was explicitly made for transgender people who had taken HRT for a period of at least 12 months, requiring such persons to be able to provide written proof from a doctor.

[123] On March 7, 2016, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an Executive Order requiring that all New York City municipalities make available to the public and their employees a single-sex facility consistent with their gender identities.

[125] The Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act became law in North Carolina in 2016, although portions of the measure were later repealed in 2017 as part of a compromise between the Democratic governor and Republican-controlled Legislature, and the remaining provisions were sunset in 2020.

The law states that in government buildings, individuals (such as students at state-operated schools) may only use restrooms and changing facilities that correspond to the sex identified on their birth certificates.

[128] On August 26, 2016, a U.S. District Court judge granted a preliminary injunction, preventing the University of North Carolina from enforcing the restroom provisions of the law.

[134] On February 16, 2016, the South Dakota Senate voted 20–15 to approve a bathroom bill that, had it passed, would have been the first in the country to require public schoolchildren to use facilities that match the sex they were assigned at birth.

The original version of this legislation would have criminalized the mere act of a transgender individual entering a restroom opposite to their sex as assigned at birth, but this provision was eventually removed.

[141][142] An analysis by NBC News determined that the Texas bill was influenced by ADF's model legislation,[57] which also proposes $2,500 in damages per encounter with a transgender person in a shared restroom.

[152] In early 2017, HB1612, proposed by Republican Bob Marshall would use the "born sex" to define which restroom, changing facility, or private area in government buildings was permitted for a given individual.

[154] A sexual assault in a high school bathroom in Loudoun County garnered national political attention in 2021, but claims that the perpetrator was transgender proved to be false.

[156] In December 2015, Washington State's Human Rights Commission enacted a rule that allowed transgender individuals to use bathrooms conforming with their gender identities.