Texas Republicans Revive Anti-Trans Bathroom Bill

Governor Greg Abbott and legislators may call the new bathroom bill under consideration in the Legislature as a means to protect women from men in intimate spaces.

But at a rally outside the Capitol on Wednesday, July 23, legislators and cisgender women called House Bill 32 by Rep. Valoree Swanson a distraction from mid-decade redistricting, dangerous, and bullshit.

Texas has some history with bathroom bills. After former Speaker of the House Joe Straus and powerful State Affairs Chairman Byron Cook killed a bathroom bill in a special session in 2017, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick still declared victory. (Though that bill was killed.)

Now it’s back and under the guise of protecting women and children. But it isn’t about safety. It’s a cover for the plan to redraw Congressional districts to further benefit Republicans, said former state senator and gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, founder of Deeds Not Words, which trains young women to advocate for gender equality, at the Capitol rally.

“It's a typical play for them to utilize our bodies to invoke and to capitalize and leverage prejudices and discrimination in order for us to move our attention from redistricting,” said Davis. “We have districts that have been drawn to guarantee Republican wins, and what that means is that they're consistently and constantly speaking to that small percentage of Texans that occupy the Republican voting primary base.”

Unlike some Democrats who have tied their 2024 losses for supporting transgender rights, Davis called for compassion.

“I know it's the case that not everyone knows someone who is trans. And I understand too that there can be a great deal of misunderstanding about our trans brothers and sisters,” she said. “But I can tell you as someone who's had the joy and benefit of coming to know so many people who are trans, our trans sisters deserve to be safe in the restroom.”

Two of the legislature’s most ardent defenders of transgender people said they’re more ready to fight than ever before.

“I've been followed in public bathrooms. I've been told that I was in the wrong dressing room because I didn't look the way that people thought a woman should look. It's happened to me in [the Capitol]. If they're doing that to me, imagine what they're doing to our trans community, especially our kids. So, I'm here to say, and we are here to say enough because we're done begging for humanity,” said Texas House LGBTQ Caucus Chair Jessica González, an out lesbian and Dallas Democrat.

Senator Molly Cook, a Houston Democrat and the first out LGBTQ member of the upper chamber, described working with survivors of sexual violence as an emergency room nurse.

“I've treated women fleeing violence from their partners and patients who simply need a safe place to be seen and cared for. This bathroom bill will not make anyone safer. I care deeply about creating safe spaces for everyone. But when Republicans claim that they're protecting women by banning trans people from public restrooms, they're exploiting survivors and others here today, they're using our stories to justify their cruelty,” she said.

Kimiya Factory also isn’t concerned about who uses what bathrooms. “I'm concerned about Immigration and Customs Enforcement hunting families like game in broad daylight. I'm concerned about the violation of constitutional rights, the lack of funding and emergency infrastructure resulting in deaths and floods in the state of Texas, about a Black woman's body being a corpse at the hands of the state legislature because of reproductive access being cut,” said the founder of the San Antonio-based activist organization Black Freedom Factory.

The Capitol, not the bathroom, is a dangerous place for Sadie Hernandez, communications manager for Transgender Education Network of Texas, the state’s largest transgender advocacy and education organization. “I only feel endangered when I'm in places like the Capitol where I have personally encountered bathroom police who are here creating a manufactured panic, which at the end of the day is just creepy and cruel. Nobody should go through that no matter what your gender identity,” she said.

Transgender people already are more likely to experience rape, sexual assault, battery and violence than cisgender people. A landmark report from the LBGTQ think tank Williams Institute from the University of California at Los Angeles School of law shows higher risk in 2017 and 2018 data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, the first

 If anyone is at risk for violence, according to the LGBTQ think tank Williams Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law, it’s transgender people < >. survey to include transgender respondents. Transgender people are also more likely to not report acts of violence to the police.

“This kind of regulation doesn't make anyone safer. It creates more confusion, more surveillance, and more opportunities for harm, especially for our transgender neighbors who are simply trying to live their lives. It punishes people not for what they do, but for who they are,” Hernandez said.