When Peyton Rose Michelle was in high school, she practiced using the restroom all day long.
As a trans woman, she felt particularly susceptible to bullying. If she went into the lads’ room, the boys might feel uneasy, she said. If she entered the girls’ restroom, she said, “God knows what would happen then.”
The Legislature is currently considering a bill this session that would define restrictions on sex-based bathroom use and effectively forbid transgender people from using facilities that reflect their gender identity.
The “Women’s Safety and Protection Act,” according to supporters, is merely intended to protect women and girls from abuse. According to critics, the bill, which also would have an impact on domestic violence shelters and prisons, will make it even more challenging for trans youth who only want to use the bathroom, making the trans community yet more vulnerable to abuse.
Public schools may be required to designate facilities for use by a single gender and forbid users of another sex from using them if the bill is passed. In state prisons, juvenile detention facilities, and domestic violence facilities managed by the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, similar regulations may apply.
“Forcing a girl to share vulnerable spaces with boys can give her a lot of stress. This is especially troubling for people who are victims of maltreatment or assault,” state Rep. Roger Wilder III, R-Denham Springs, who authored the bill, said in a speech.
Wilder said he brought the bill to protect children’s right to privacy. HB 608 has 62 co-sponsors and is backed by Gov. Jeff Landry, according to his director, Kate Kelly.
“It’s a shame that bills like this need to be brought in the first place,” Kelly said in a speech. “It seems commonsense.”
But the bill’s critics, including LGBTQ+ rights activists, warn it would harm trans victims of domestic violence and solidify their lack of access to safe accommodation in prisons.
Michelle, the senior producer of Louisiana Trans Advocates, called HB 608 “the most dangerous bill to transgender people that is filed this session.”
“It evidently just codifies discrimination into law,” she said.
Prisons
The bill’s goal is “to provide protections for women and girls against sexual assault, harassment, and violence in (spaces) where women have traditionally been given safety and protection from acts of abuse committed by biological men,” according to the bill.
However, Andrea Armstrong, a prison scholar and law professor at Loyola University, claimed the policy may conflict with the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, because it would revoke jailers’ authority to make decisions that aim to protect against abuse.
State prisons now divide men from women. But, PREA requires corrections officials to consider an inmate’s gender identity, and not just the gender they were assigned at birth, when making housing decisions, since trans people are more vulnerable to abuse when housed among the general population, she said.
In training in Louisiana, Armstrong said, corrections officers seem to come to the same conclusions independently: that transgender inmates may be housed with members of their sex assigned at birth or, maybe, in solitary confinement. The latter option also can cause harm, as it limits inmates’ access to programming, Armstrong said.
Nicholas Hite, an attorney who works on LGBTQ+ rights issues, added that the bill “removes an important avenue for advocacy for folks that are incarcerated” and makes prisons less safe.
Morion Jones, a transgender woman from New Orleans who was previously incarcerated, described how it felt to live with men while in jail.
“It’s not only that I’m Black, but I’m trans, and not only that I’m trans, but I’m in an all-male facility,” she said. The “guards and inmates look down upon people like me,” according to her.
But Wilder, the bill sponsor, argued HB 608 could succeed where PREA has not.
In his statement, he said, “PREA generally has in many ways failed to protect women from sexual abuse while incarcerated.” “It has also failed to protect men while incarcerated. This bill accomplishes what PREA does not.”
Schools and Domestic Violence Shelters
Additionally, HB 608 mandates that public schools “designate each restroom or changing area for the exclusive use of either females, males, or members of the same family.” Domestic violence shelters would also need to be segregated based on sexuality.
The proposal resembles so-called “bathroom bills” passed in red states across the country. In 2016, North Carolina became the first state to pass a similar law, bringing it into the national spotlight. It was later overturned.
In a statement, Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, and a bill co-sponsor, said the bill’s goal is “very simple — to protect Louisiana’s women and girls against sexual assault and harassment.”
“As a father of two daughters, this is very near and dear to me, and no woman or girl in our state should ever be made to feel unsafe” while in a bathroom, changing room, or locker room, he said.
Rep. Laurie Schlegel, R-Metairie and another co-sponsor, added that she supports “the protection of same-sex spaces”, pointing to legislation to bar trans girls from girls’ sports teams that she authored last year.
And Rep. Debbie Villio, R- Kenner, echoed those points, saying the lack of such separation “is especially distressing for women who are survivors of abuse or assault”.
However, Britain Forsyth, a transgender man and the legislative coordinator for Step Up Louisiana, asserted that the bill’s goal is to keep transgender women out of domestic violence facilities.
“Trans women are already really at high risk for a lot of different types of violence, and I think they deserve a place to go if they’re in a situation as frightening as a domestic violence situation,” he said.
Michelle continued, “These bills have negatively impacted LGBTQ+ people’s mental health when they have been passed elsewhere in the country.”
“One could only imagine that this bill will harm young people who are, to be honest, just trying to look in the mirror or pee,” she said.
