Bathroom bill faces tough road
Senate votes to approve measure, but it’s expected to crash in House
AUSTIN — Dangerous. Discriminatory. Chilling. Hurtful.
Those are words used by House State Affairs Chairman Byron Cook to describe bathroom legislation headed to his committee in the Texas House in the coming days.
The Republican from Corsicana said legislation that would force transgender people to use bathrooms in line with their birth sex “puts people at risk,” but stopped short of saying what he plans to do with the bills headed to his committee during the special legislative session.
“Requiring those people to go to the women’s restroom when they look like men, that can be dangerous. Requiring men who are trans women and wear dresses and makeup and look just like women, requiring them to go to the men’s room creates a dangerous situation,” he said.
The Texas Senate voted Wednesday to approve Senate Bill 3, a bill backed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a tea party Republican from Houston who has championed it as a way to protect women’s privacy and safety while using the bathroom or locker room. After eight hours of debate, the legislation sailed through the Republicanled Senate after midnight. The bill is expected to crash land in the House, where GOP members are more aligned with the interests of businesses that came out in force last week to cast the bill as a discriminatory measure that will hurt the state’s economy and efforts to recruit a quality workforce.
The State Affairs Committee, considered the gatekeeper to control whether the bathroom bill advances to the House floor, will “try to do what is in the best interest in the state of Texas,” said Cook. “That’s what we always try to do.”
Cook on Wednesday walked a careful line on
his stance on bathroom legislation in an essay on Texas GOP Vote, a Republican website that serves as a community forum on issues before the Legislature.
“As for my position on the ‘bathroom’ bill, I support legislation that limits admittance (based on gender at birth) to multi-stall bathrooms and locker rooms in our schools and requires local school districts to develop singlestall bathroom policies for its transgender students,” he wrote. “Beyond clarifying this policy for our public schools, we already have strong laws in Texas against sexual predators. Therefore, I do not condone duplicitous grandstanding on this issue and/ or discriminatory legislation; nor do I support laws that will adversely affect our state’s economy.”
No crime data
Asked for more detail about his position on the bill, he told the Houston Chronicle a bathroom bill would hurt the state’s economy. He added that Texas has laws on the books to address people who cause others harm and said there is no crime data to justify a bathroom law.
“I think common sense tells us this is not legislation that would ultimately prove even necessary or beneficial to the state,” he said.
His committee heard from hundreds of people during the regular legislative session urging lawmakers to kill bathroom legislation. The bill the House considered at the time was never voted on, but once the bill was all but dead, Republican members signed on to it in droves to show their support for the measure without being forced to vote on it. In total, 79 members became co-authors of the bill.
House lawmakers later managed to tack on a watered-down version of the Senate’s preferred bill on the House floor, requiring school districts to establish bathroom policies for situations where students are uncomfortable using multi-stall bathrooms.
No version ever passed both chambers during the regular session. Patrick wanted more far-reaching legislation, and House Speaker Joe Straus, a Republican from San Antonio who has remained a steadfast opponent to bathroom bill, said the House would go no further.
Rep. Ron Simmons hopes this session will be different. After watching his last bathroom bill wither away in the House committee, he is now sponsoring two bathroom bills that would restrict local governments and schools from setting bathroom policies to protect people from discrimination unless the federal or state government steps in with its own rules.
‘Thread the needle’
“Transgender discrimination? I don’t see it like that,” said Simmons, who said he is concerned with forcing children of different sexes to share space in situations of undress. “I’m hoping we can thread the needle with something related to schools.”
The Republican from Carrollton said he likes aspects of the Senate bill that restrict transgender girls from competing on girls teams, and added he is willing to make changes to his legislation or at least push the study the issue before the next regular session.
Gov. Greg Abbott called lawmakers back to Austin this month to take up 20 issues in a special legislative session that runs through mid-August. While the Senate worked through the weekend to review and pass the largely conservative-slate of issues, the House has taken its time. Leaders in the chamber say they will be “deliberate” in hearing bills and have shown little appetite to pass a bathroom bill.
Business leaders from large companies like IBM, American Airlines and AT&T have also voiced opposition to the legislation, either by sending letters to the governor, speaking out on the steps of the Texas Capitol or roaming the halls meeting with lawmakers. Others have said the state has lost $66 million in convention business over the state’s contemplation of a bathroom bill.