On Nov. 5, 2024, Sarah McBride made history as the first transgender person elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Many quickly celebrated her victory as a silver lining for an election season inundated with anti-trans messaging, even while some members of the LGBTQ+ community expressed reservations about some of McBride’s policy positions.
Just two weeks later, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced a resolution on Nov. 18 that would block McBride from using sex-segregated facilities within the U.S. Capitol or House office buildings. The resolution stipulates that McBride (and others) would be prohibited from using restrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms that do not correspond to the individual’s “biological sex.” Mace did not veil the discriminatory intent of her proposed resolution, and commented to reporters that her bathroom bill “absolutely” is intended to target McBride.
Other Republicans joined Mace to express their intent to make life on Capitol Hill challenging for McBride. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene opined that Mace’s resolution did not go far enough – and said she would be willing to get into a physical fight with McBride if she encountered her in a women’s restroom. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) struck a slightly more conciliatory note, promising to “find a resolution that solves the problem.”
Yet another chapter in bathroom politics
These attacks on transgender people using sex-segregated facilities are hardly new. My research examined the introduction and diffusion of these types of bills across the United States following North Carolina’s ill-fated HB2, simply known as “the bathroom bill,” in 2017. I highlighted the explosion of anti-trans bathroom legislation from zero bills in 2014 to 28 bills introduced in 2017. Those numbers seem tame in comparison to the hundreds of bills introduced since 2020 – all of which that seek to enshrine discrimination against transgender people into law.
Other political scientists have argued that restricting access to public space on the basis of sex assigned at birth, or “biology” (by which these commentators usually mean genitals or, even further, chromosomes), is one way lawmakers use “sex” to make it impossible for transgender people to exist in public. In that regard, legislation like this finds a close cousin in Jim Crow laws that once banned Black people from using the same public restrooms as white people. And another example is the deliberate efforts by city planners to keep women out of public space by simply not providing restroom facilities.
The U.S. government is no exception to using bathrooms to enshrine discrimination. It wasn’t until 2011 that the House of Representatives provided a designated women’s room, in fact. Up until then, women in Congress had to travel to Statuary Hall, where they often had to vie with tourists to use the facilities. Critics have lambasted the lack of facilities for women in both the House and Senate as a vestige of men dominating politics.
McBride, for her part, took a political approach to addressing the resolution. After announcing that Mace and her Republican colleagues should focus on issues that affect Americans, such as stagnant wages and high prices, she traveled to Delaware. In Bellefonte, DE, she met with local firefighters to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of public service to the town.
