Which states have laws regarding transgender bathroom use and how are these laws enforced?

After Sarah McBride, D-Del., was elected as the first transgender congresswoman on Nov. 5, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced a resolution to ban transgender people from using some U.S. Capitol buildings and the US House of Representatives to ban bathrooms that match their gender identity.

Mace’s resolution said the House sergeant-at-arms would be responsible for enforcement, but provided no further details about enforcement. Nor did the policy that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., issued days later saying that all single-sex restrooms in the Capitol complex would be reserved for people of that biological sex.

These proposed House rules are not unique: More than a dozen states have enacted similar laws, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank focused on LGBTQ+ rights and voting access. And other states continue to follow suit: Ohio’s legislature passed a similar law and sent it to Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who signed it into law on Nov. 27.

Like the Capitol rules, these laws, which focus primarily on public schools, often provide little information about how to enforce them. In Florida and Utah, laws provide criminal penalties for certain violations; Most states do not impose any criminal penalties for violations at all.

LGBTQ+ advocates say the laws have increased harassment for both transgender and cisgender people.

State laws governing transgender use of restrooms and locker rooms

In 2016, North Carolina lawmakers passed the first state law requiring people to use restrooms that match their birth gender. In 2017, lawmakers removed the requirement for backlash and boycotts.

However, as of 2021, similar bathroom laws have also been passed in other states. Some laws are very new; Alabama’s Higher Education Act went into effect on October 1st.

In Florida, transgender people are prohibited from using public restrooms and gender-segregated facilities that match their gender identity in all state buildings, including K-12 schools and colleges. The law stipulates that people who violate the law and refuse to leave the toilets when asked to do so can be charged with trespassing. (The criminal sanctions do not apply to students or employees of educational institutions.)

In Utah, public school students are prohibited from using public restrooms and other “gender-specific privacy spaces,” including locker rooms and locker rooms that do not correspond to their gender assigned at birth. However, students cannot be prosecuted for violating the rule.

Utah law does not require restrooms outside of schools; It prohibits transgender people from using “gender-affirming locker rooms” that differ from their assigned gender at birth in public buildings open to the public unless they have undergone gender-affirming surgery and have the gender listed on their birth certificate changed.

In Utah, people who enter a locker room or locker room that does not correspond to their birth gender could be charged with trespassing, loitering, indecency or voyeurism, depending on the circumstances, the Associated Press reported.

Four other states — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and North Dakota — have bathroom bans in place for K-12 schools and at least some other state buildings. Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee have bans in K-12 schools, according to the Movement Advancement Project map.

Other states have considered similar laws. In January, West Virginia lawmakers referred a bill that would restrict transgender people’s access to the bathroom to the Judiciary Committee, but it did not advance.

New Hampshire passed a bill that would have allowed “classification of individuals based on biological sex” in bathrooms and locker rooms, among other places, which could have been used to prevent transgender people from using the facilities that match their gender identity . Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed that bill in July and the Legislature did not override the veto.

In April, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill that would have replaced “sex” with “gender” in state law and defined “sex” as a person’s sex at birth. Kansas passed a similar law, ultimately overriding Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto.

The Kansas law “will likely be used to justify future bathroom bans, but is not itself a bathroom ban,” said Logan Casey of the Movement Advancement Project. “It effectively lays the foundation or justifies such bad policy, but does not itself require it.”

LGBTQ+ advocates say the laws are aimed at pushing transgender people out of public life

We found little available information about how the laws are enforced and no cases where people have been criminally charged for violating Utah or Florida laws.

Casey, director of policy research at the Movement Advancement Project, said the laws “typically contain little to no information about how to actually enforce the law,” noting that some do not specify penalties for violations.

Jon Davidson, a senior attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBTQ and HIV Project, said he knows of no public database of arrests for violations of these laws. He called the laws a discriminatory attempt to prevent transgender people from being part of public life.

“Regardless of the level of law enforcement, the laws cause harm to transgender people,” Davidson wrote in an email to PolitiFact. He said the laws signal that the government does not view transgender people’s gender identities as valid, “they make (trans people) fearful of using multi-user toilets, and encourage vigilantism and harassment by non-government actors against anyone who even wants to.” is perceived as transgender.” “

For example, Davidson pointed to a news report about Florida, where both transgender and cisgender people — people whose gender identity matches their birth sex — report harassment or being shunned from public restrooms because of the law.

Casey echoed those concerns, pointing to a 2016 news report about people being harassed in bathrooms because others believed they were transgender. This report was prepared before most toilet ban laws came into effect. “Therefore, it is safe to assume that such incidents have likely increased in recent years,” Casey said.

Data from a June 2019 study in the journal Pediatrics also showed that transgender and non-binary students were often more likely to experience sexual assault when restroom or locker room use was restricted based on gender identity.

Marina Lowe, policy director at Equality Utah, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, said one of the biggest problems with the Utah law is that there is no clear understanding of how to enforce it.

These laws increase the number of people “making assumptions and judgments about people based on their appearance,” she said. “That’s what I think is the really damaging part of these types of bills, not just for people who are part of the trans community, but for anyone who doesn’t necessarily identify or fit into traditional norms when it comes to gender .” .”

Anecdotally, Lowe said she’s heard of women with short hair being asked if they’re using the right toilet, for example.

PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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