U.S. bills versus transgender bathroom access tenuous

Bills to curtail transgender people’s access to public restrooms are pending in about a dozen U.S. states, but even in conservative bastions such as Texas and Arkansas they may be doomed by highpowered opposition.

The bills have taken on a new significance this week following the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to revoke an Obama-era federal directive instructing public schools to let transgender students use bathrooms and locker rooms of their chosen gender. Many conservative leaders hailed the assertions by top Trump appointees that the issue was best handled at the state and local level.

Yet at the state level, bills that would limit transgender bathroom access are floundering even though nearly all have surfaced in Republican-controlled legislatures that share common ground politically with Trump. In none of the states with pending bills does passage seem assured; there has been vigorous opposition from business groups and a notable lack of support from several Republican governors.

The chief reason, transgender-rights leaders say, is the backlash that hit North Carolina after its legislature approved a bill in March 2016 requiring transgender people to use public restrooms that correspond to the sex on their birth certificates. Several major sports organizations shifted events away from North Carolina, and businesses such as PayPal decided not to expand in the state. In November, Republican Pat McCrory, who signed and defended the bill, became the only incumbent governor to lose in the general election.

“We don’t need that in Arkansas,” said that state’s Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, this month. “If there’s a North Carolina-type bill, then I want the legislature not to pass it.”

North Carolina’s experience also has been evoked in Texas, where a “bathroom bill” known as Senate Bill 6 is being championed by Republican Lt.-Gov. Dan Patrick, who founded the legislature’s tea party caucus and oversees the state Senate. Business groups and LGBT-rights supporters have warned that passage of the North Carolina-style bill could cost Texas many millions of dollars, as well as the opportunity to host future pro sports championships.

Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston, assessed the bill’s chances of enactment as “effectively zero.” The measure might not even clear the Senate, he said, and would be “dead on arrival” if it reached the House of Representatives.

“The centrist conservative Republicans in the House, led by Speaker Joe Straus, view SB 6 as an unwanted distraction,” Jones said.

In Virginia, South Dakota and Wyoming, bills targeting transgender people died this year for lack of high-level support. The South Dakota bill, opposed by Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard, would have required public school students to use the locker rooms and shower rooms matching their gender at birth.

In several other states, such as Kansas and Kentucky, bathroom bills remain alive but are gaining little traction. Kentucky’s Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, though a staunch social conservative, has dismissed the proposal as unnecessary government intrusion. “Is there anyone you know in Kentucky who has trouble going to the bathroom?” he asked.

According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, about 150,000 young people in the U.S. — 0.7 per cent of those between the ages of 13 and 17 — identify as transgender.