Texas Gov. Abbott Signs Transgender Bathroom Bill Into Law

Authored by Victoria Friedman via The Epoch Times,

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Sept. 22 signed a bill into law that requires people to use public bathrooms and other facilities according to their biological sex.

“I’m about to sign a law that says no men in women’s restrooms,” the governor said in a video shared on X, adding, “This is just common sense.”

Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) applies to government-owned, controlled, or operated buildings such as schools.

The restrictions apply to what are termed as a “multiple-occupancy private space”—facilities designed for use by more than one person at a time—and in which the person may be in a state of undress around another, regardless of whether there are partitions or partial walls. The law said this includes bathrooms, changing rooms, shower facilities, and locker rooms.

Entities that fail to abide by the law face a $25,000 fine for the first violation, then $125,000 for the second and subsequent violations. It is effective from Dec. 4.

The law stipulates that family violence shelters providing services specifically to women may serve only biological women and their children aged 17 and under.

It also instructs the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to “ensure inmates are housed in a correctional facility, including a dormitory or cellblock of a correctional facility, according to the inmate’s sex.”

The Texas House passed SB 8 in an 86-45 vote on Aug. 28.

After the passage of SB 8, the office of state Rep. Angelia Orr—a Republican and one of the bill’s sponsors—said in a statement that Texas women and girls will be safer.

“No longer will a biological male be permitted to enter a women’s private space (locker room, bathroom, changing room, etc). We are returning to biological truth and restoring dignity, safety, and privacy to women and girls when they are at their most vulnerable,” Orr’s office said in the statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas said on Aug. 28 that SB 8 will encourage “gender policing” by those who “seek to harass or harm transgender people—or anyone who may not conform to stereotypical gender roles in public spaces.”

Ash Hall, a policy and advocacy strategist at the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement that the law puts at risk those who don’t “seem masculine or feminine enough to a random stranger, including the cisgender girls and women this bill purports to protect. Some people might forgo using public restrooms entirely out of fear for their safety, even if it endangers their health.”

In June 2023, Abbott signed a law prohibiting biological males who identify as female from competing in women’s collegiate sports. This followed a 2021 law that barred biological males in K-12 schools from joining sports teams that do not match their biological sex.

The governor signed into law in June of this year a bill that defined male and female.

The move mirrored a January executive order from President Donald Trump stating that the United States recognizes only male and female, and that sex is immutable and “grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”