Bathroom Bills Are Back — Broader and Stricter — In Several States - KFF Health News
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State lawmakers are resurrecting and expanding efforts to prohibit transgender people from using public restrooms and other spaces that match their gender. Some have sought to ban trans people from “sex-designated spaces,” including domestic violence shelters and crisis centers, which experts say could violate anti-discrimination laws and jeopardize federal funding.

Republican lawmakers in several states have resurrected and expanded the fight over whether transgender people may use bathrooms and other facilities that do not match their sex assigned at birth.

At least one bill goes so far as making it a crime for a transgender person to enter a facility that doesn’t match the sex listed on their birth certificate.

The debate has been popping up in statehouses across the nation in recent months, predominantly in conservative, rural states, including at a hearing of the Arizona Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee in February. Proponents of that state’s SB 1628, which defines “male,” “female,” and other terms through rigid definitions of biological sex, argued that women’s rights are at stake. Opponents disagreed and said the language would erase transgender people from state statute and remove legal protections.

  • Gork
    38·
    4 months ago

    The state’s legislative fiscal analysts determined that $7.5 billion in federal funds were on the line in the first year, depending on how state agencies implemented the law and whether those actions were deemed violations of anti-discrimination laws. The bill passed regardless and was signed by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte.

    It’s wild that they are willing to turn down $7.5 billion dollars in Federal funding just to pursue their discriminatory agenda.