A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | CH | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
 | The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with North America and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (May 2018) |
| Part of a series on |
| Transgender topics |
|---|
 Category |
A bathroom bill is the common name for legislation or a statute that denies access to public toilets by gender or transgender identity. Bathroom bills affect access to sex-segregated public facilities for an individual based on a determination of their sex as defined in some specific way, such as their sex as assigned at birth, their sex as listed on their birth certificate, or the sex that corresponds to their gender identity.[1] A bathroom bill can either be inclusive or exclusive of transgender individuals, depending on the aforementioned definition of their sex.
Proponents of the bills argue that such legislation is necessary to maintain privacy, protect what they claim to be an innate sense of modesty held by most cisgender people, prevent voyeurism, assault, molestation, and rape,[2] and retain psychological comfort.[3][4] Critics of the bills argue that they do not make public restrooms any safer for cisgender people, and that they make public restrooms less safe for both transgender people and gender non-conforming cisgender people.[5][6][7] Additionally, critics claim there have been no cases of a transgender person attacking a cisgender person in a public restroom,[5][8] although there has been one reported incident of voyeurism in a fitting room.[9] The American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics are all opposed to bathroom bills.[10][11][12][13]
One bathroom bill, the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act in North Carolina, was approved as a law in 2016, although portions of the measure were later repealed in 2017 as part of a compromise between the Democratic governor and Republican-controlled Legislature. Also in 2016, guidance was issued by the U.S. 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money must treat a student's gender identity as their sex (for example, in regard to bathrooms).[14] This policy was revoked in 2017.[14]
United States
Since 2021, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Idaho have enacted bathroom bills.[15][16]
State legislatures in Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas have proposed bathroom bills. The National Center for Transgender Equality, an LGBTQ advocacy group, calls these bills discriminatory.[17]
Jurisdiction
 |
.jpg)
Each of the states in the U.S. is a sovereign entity with the ability to make its own laws, which are secondary to federal law under the doctrine of federalism as carved out in the Constitution. To pass federal (national) laws, the government has to justify that the topic affects some national interest as defined in that document. For example, the law may apply only to federal property. Alternatively, a law may apply to state property, but it might be argued to affect a federal interest. Moreover, each state may delegate powers to its local governments. Thus, there are federal, state and local laws that govern toilets and other intimate spaces. Additionally, federal or state agencies may be authorized to issue regulations to further clarify laws, but they are only valid if they are consistent with the overarching legislation under which they were issued. Building laws (including regulations) in some states require that toilets be physically separated for both sexes, making unisex toilets virtually illegal. Unisex toilets have been increasingly put into operation in universities and large cities, although most of these institutions also offer the alternative of sex-separated spaces.
Examples
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. It was the first ruling of its kind in the United States and one of the first high-profile transgender rights cases, garnering huge amounts of media attention.[18]
In May 2016, the United States Department of Justice and the United States Department of Education released a joint guidance on the application of Title IX protections to transgender students.[19] The guidance stated that for the purpose of Title IX, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education treat a student's gender identity as their sex. The guidance was followed by a formal "Dear Colleague" letter on May 13.[20]
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.[21] The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit had previously ruled that Grimm could use these restrooms, but the Supreme Court stayed that decision in August.[22]
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.[23] The preexisting ordinance, in § 12-58 prohibited discrimination race, religion or national origin. In addition, the preexisting ordinance in § 12-59 banned discrimination based on sex but specifically exempted bathrooms, changing rooms and other intimate spaces from sex discrimination prohibitions, thus allowing separation based on sex.[24] The ordinance did not ban discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. By the February 2016 amendment, the City Council added gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and marital status to the protected categories. It also deleted this provision that allowed separation based on "sex". In so doing, it essentially eliminated the word "sex" from the city ordinance, leaving the term gender. The North Carolina legislature reacted by passing the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act (HB2). In addition to making other changes, the bill defined the issue of bathroom access as one of statewide concern, defined sex as biological.[25] It required that all bathrooms be separated by biological sex. It did allow for business owners to apply for a waiver to make single-entry bathrooms all-gender/mixed-sex. Afterward, advocacy groups, celebrities, and businesses joined in a boycott of the state.[26] Later, in a "compromise", the legislature agreed to repeal HB2, but it also barred localities from making any changes regarding bathrooms until 2020.[27]
Shortly after HB2 was passed, in May 2016, in the last year of President Obama's presidency, the U.S. Justice Department sued North Carolina over its 'bathroom bill' in order to stop its implementation.[28] Moreover, advocates claim that businesses in North Carolina have enforced toilet restrictions on transgender customers at their discretion.[29] 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.[29] Later, the Justice Department under Trump withdrew its opposition to this and similar state laws and policies.
Currently[when?] according to the American Civil Liberties Union there are currently 469 anti-LGBTQ bills in the US, most targeting transgender people. Current examples include Kansas SB 180.[30]
Public perception
 | This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: Newer surveys have been published after 2019. (November 2023) |
Public opinion regarding "transgender bathroom rights" in the United States is mixed:
| Date(s) conducted | Support laws that require transgender individuals to use bathrooms that correspond to their birth sex | Oppose laws that require transgender individuals to use bathrooms that correspond to their birth sex | Don't know / NA | Margin of error | Sample | Conducted by | Polling type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 25, 2023 – August 30, 2023 | 54% | 40% | 5% | 2.19% | Representative sample of 2525 American adults | Public Religion Research Institute[31] | Online interview |
| February 17, 2023 – March 3, 2023 | 45% | 40% | 16% | ? | "Approximately a thousand" adults under 75 | Online Survey | |
| September 1, 2022 – September 11, 2022 | 52% | 44% | 4% | 2.3% | Representative sample of 2523 American adults | Public Religion Research Institute[32] | Online interview |
| August 09, 2021 – August 30, 2021 | 47% | 50% | 2% | 1.86% | Representative sample of 5,415 adults | Public Religion Research Institute[33] | Online interview |
| June 10, 2019 | 45% | 47% | +/- 3.5 percentage points | 1,100 American adults | Pew Research | Cellphone and landline phones | |
| April 09, 2019 – April 20, 2019 | 45% | 47% | 8% | 3.5% | Random Sample of 1,100 adults | Online interview | |
| August 02, 2017 – August 08, 2017 | 38% | 50% | 12% | ? | 2,024 | PRRI | Landline and Cell phone |
| May 3, 2017 – May 7, 2017 | 48% | 45% | 7% | 4% | 1,011 adults American adults | Gallup | Cellphone and landline phones |
| March 2017 | 40% | 40% | ? | ? | YouGov | ? | |
| February 10, 2017 – February 19, 2017 | 39% | 53% | 8% | 2.6% | 2,031 adults | Public Religion Research Institute | Live interviews via RDD telephones and cell phones |
| August 16, 2016 – September 12, 2016, 2016 | 46% | 51% | 3% | 2.4% | 4,538 respondents | Pew Research | Web and mail |
| May 4, 2016 – May 8, 2016 | 50% | 40% | 10% | ? | ? | Gallup | ? |
| April 28, 2016 – May 1, 2016 | 38% | 57% | 5% | 3% | 1,001 adults | CNN / ORC International | Live interviews via landline telephones and cell phones |
| March 26, 2016 – March 28, 2016 | 37% | 37% | 26% | 4% | 1,000 adult American citizens | YouGov | Online interviews |
| June 3, 2015 – June 4, 2015 | 46% | 41% | 12% | 4.1% | 1,300 unweighted respondents | CBS / NYT | ? |
Reception
Proponents of bathroom bills argue that such legislation is necessary to maintain privacy, protect what they claim to be an innate sense of modesty held by most cisgender people, prevent voyeurism, assault, molestation, and rape,[2] and retain psychological comfort.[3][4]
Critics of bathroom bills have argued that they place transgender people in danger without making cisgender people any safer and that they even make things more dangerous for gender non-conforming cisgender people.[5][6] Many national health and anti-sexual assault organizations oppose bathroom bills, such as the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.[10][11][12][13] The UCLA's Williams Institute has tracked prevalence of crimes in bathrooms since the passage of various protections for the transgender population and has found that there has been no significant change in the number of crimes.[18] Marcie Bianco, writing for Mic, pointed out that there is not a single documented case of a transgender person attacking a cisgender person in a public restroom,[5] although there has been one reported incident of voyeurism in a fitting room.[9] The controversy has been labeled a moral panic by Pacific Standard,[34] and Dan Savage went so far as to call it an "anti-trans blood libel".[35]
According to the largest U.S. survey of transgender people ever undertaken, carried out by the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) in 2015 with 27,715 respondents, 1% of respondents reported being sexually assaulted in a public restroom for being transgender. 12% reported being verbally harassed in a public restroom, and another one percent reported being non-sexually physically assaulted for being transgender. 9% reported being denied the right to use a public restroom consistent with their expressed gender.[36] The NCTE acknowledges in its report that this survey was undertaken before any bathroom bills had been passed or were in the news.[36] Multiple studies find that denying trans people to the bathroom that they identify with is associated with poor mental health, suicide, and suicide attempts.[37][38]
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".[39]
Education
In 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education, under President Barack Obama issued "guidance" to state and private educational institutions stating that these institutions had to allow transgender students to use toilets according to their gender identity. The Obama guidance suggested that schools and private institutions risked federal funding if they did not comply.[40]
How the guidance was issued was controversial. Guidance procedures are normally issued only to other federal agencies. These guidances are then sometimes shared with state entities and private institutions as advisory, but they are normally not compulsive. While agencies can issue regulations that are consistent with existing law, they cannot exceed or change the law. Moreover, those regulations must comply with the U.S. Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The APA requires notice to the public and a period for comments. Opponents argued that using the joint guidance was inappropriate and was designed to circumvent the APA. The Department of Justice, the Department of Education, advocacy groups and private litigants brought cases to enforce the joint guidance interpretation.
One of those cases, G.G. v. Gloucester School Board, reached the Supreme Court in 2016. On February 22, 2017, about a month after Trump's inauguration, the government withdrew the May 13 guidance.[41] In withdrawing the guidance, then Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated in a letter, "The prior guidance documents did not contain sufficient legal analysis or explain how the interpretation was consistent with the language of Title IX. ... Congress, state legislatures, and local governments are in a position to adopt appropriate policies or laws addressing this issue."[42] On March 6, 2017, the Supreme Court determined that, in light of the changed position of the government, the case, should be vacated and the case remanded for further consideration in the lower courts.[43]
Employment
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a key U.S. agency that enforces federal workplace rules. States also have their own rules but in a conflict, if constitutional, federal law is supreme. A key statute is Title VII. 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. Title VII does not mention sexual orientation or gender identity.[44]
Although few dispute that Congress was thinking about gender identity or sexual orientation in 1964, advocates have argued that sexual orientation and gender identity are included in the law's reference to "sex". In 2012, the EEOC adopted this view. It ruled in Macy v. Holder, a case involving federal employees, that Title VII required that "gender identity" be treated the same as "sex".[45] It also ruled soon thereafter that a transgender person had to be afforded access to a public toilet matching the person's gender identity without a requirement of surgery or status identification.[46] These decisions departed from then existing legal precedent as well as the EEOC's own long line of precedents. The EEOC began to bring and support lawsuits across the country to enforce its interpretation. Citing the EEOC's holding, several courts later followed the EEOC's interpretation, although some rejected it.
On June 15, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court decided three cases about the rights of transgender people under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964:
- R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The case involved a transgender woman who was fired from her job at a funeral home after she asked to begin wearing the uniform for women rather than men. The funeral home's owner refused, citing the religious concerns of the employer and potential clients. The court ruled that transgender people are protected from employment discrimination. Regarding whether the decision affected the very existence of "sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes", Justice Gorsuch wrote: "none of these other laws are before us...we do not prejudge any such question today."[47]
- Bostock v. Clayton County
- Altitude Express, Inc. v Zarda
One has seen reversals of Obama-era policies at the federal level with respect to other statutes such as Title IX which prohibits denials of educational opportunity based on sex. In May 2016 the U.S. Department of Education and the Justice Department under the Obama Administration indicated that single-sex schools and schools receiving federal money must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.[48] That guidance was later withdrawn by the Department of Justice under President Trump.[49]
Currently[clarification needed] in the U.S., each state, county, and city government enacts its own legislation governing how it will or will not address the rights of LGBT individuals; this includes provision of public toilets.
State legislation
Bathroom bills have been proposed and debated in a number of state legislatures. 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.[50][51][52] 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.[50][53]
Table
The following table summarizes state legislation and school guidelines regarding restroom access that either is currently in effect, or is still under deliberation with movement within the last year[when?]:
| State | Applies to | Summary | Status | Last Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR | Adults | Act 619 criminalizes those who knowingly stay inside restrooms with a child of the opposite biological sex | In effect as of April 11, 2023 [54] | March 11, 2024 |
| AR | Students | HB 1156 allows students to sue the school if they encounter a member of the opposite biological sex in a single-sex restroom | Passed on March 13, 2023, awaiting to be signed into law | March 13, 2023 |
| AK | Students | HB 105 separates students by biological sex in restrooms and locker rooms | Referred to committee on March 8, 2023 | March 13, 2023 |
| AL | Students | HB 322 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 | Passed on April 7, 2022 | |
| CT | Adults | SB 00467 permits businesses to ban trans people from bathrooms | Introduced January 18, 2023, referred to committee | March 17, 2023 |
| FL | Adults | HB 1521, "Provides that any person who willfully enters a restroom or changing facility designated for the opposite sex on the premises of a covered entity, for a purpose other than the authorized uses listed in the bill, who refuses to depart when asked to do so by a person authorized to make such a request, commits the criminal offense of trespass."[55] | Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Bathroom_bill