Bathroom Bans Back in Odessa

Odessa, Texas has waded back into the fight over restroom use by transgender people. On Tuesday, the city council voted 5-2 to force people to use the public restroom that corresponds to their birth gender identity.

LGBT and civil rights activists immediately condemned the measure.

“It is not only unnecessary but also a complete waste of the city’s time, money and resources,” Alexander Ermels, president of PFLAG’s Midland and Odessa chapter, said during public testimony.

Fights over transgender use of restrooms is nothing new in Texas. In 2014, Houston passed the HERO Act, which added gender identity to the list of protections when it comes to discrimination. There was an immediate conservative backlash that eventually led to HERO being overturned.

The success of the anti-trans opposition embolden opponents of gender identity equality, and it continues to be a major part of conservative elective messaging today. Many of Sen. Ted Cruz’s ads against opponent Rep. Colin Allred claim that Allred wishes to put “men in women’s bathrooms.” Conspiracy theories about school-sponsored gender reassignment surgeries abound in right-wing online spaces.

Despite the passage in Odessa and vehement anti-trans advocacy, the law is unlikely to prevail in the end. Texas tried to pass a similar state-wide ban in 2017, only for it to fail. Trans people are federally protected under Title IX, and are increasingly part of official policies against discrimination, both public and private. A lawsuit that challenges the Odessa law and ends up before the conservative U.S. Supreme Court could change that, however.

The Odessa ban fines people $500 for using the bathroom non-consistent with their gender assigned at birth and makes them eligible for trespassing charges. It also allows people to sue the bathroom user for up to $10,000 in damages, possibly turning the law into another bounty hunting vehicle similar to the state’s abortion ban.

How the gender of the person using the bathroom is to be determined is not spelled out in the law. There have been numerous reports of women being harassed in bathrooms after bans have been instituted,  with the aggressors thinking they were trans. There is also no link between sexual assault of women and girls and trans-inclusive bathroom policies. Studies consistently show the trans-inclusive bathroom policies do not increase the rate girls and women are assaulted.  Nonetheless, it remains a point of faith among conservatives, leading to laws like the one in Odessa.