WASHINGTON (CN) — Days after she came out swinging against the first openly transgender member of Congress, South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace is pursuing a sweeping legislative crackdown on trans rights on federal property.
Emboldened by media attention and public backlash she received this week over her attempt to keep incoming Delaware Representative Sarah McBride out of women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill, Mace on Wednesday unveiled legislation which would not only ink that proposal into law but also drastically expand its scope.
If made law, the bill, which the South Carolina Republican has branded the Protecting Women’s Private Spaces Act, would prohibit people from using single-sex bathrooms, locker rooms or changing rooms on federal property “other than those corresponding to their biological sex.” The measure would functionally prevent trans women or trans men from using facilities that correspond with their gender identity.
Mace’s legislation defines federal property as any building or land owned by an agency of the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense and the U.S. Postal Service. Property owned by the municipal government of Washington D.C. and the governments of U.S. territories also fall under the bill’s definition federal property — meaning the nation’s capital and outlying territories would be forced to abide by the proposed facility restrictions.
The measure would also establish rigid definitions for the terms “male” and “female” under the law.
Mace filed her bill on the heels of a separate resolution aimed at blocking trans members of Congress and staffers from using gender conforming restrooms in the Capitol and in House office buildings. The South Carolina Republican has explicitly stated that the move was targeted at McBride, who will be sworn into Congress in January.
And in a statement Wednesday, Mace tied her new legislation to what she called “performative outrage” over the Capitol bathroom resolution.
“The radical Left says I’m a ‘threat,’ she wrote. “You better believe it. And I will shamelessly call you out for putting women and girls in harm’s way. Women fought for these spaces, and I will not let them be erased to score political points with a small but loud activist class.”
As the lawmaker expands her assault on trans rights, House Republicans on Wednesday backed her fight against McBride’s bathroom access on Capitol Hill.
After only cryptically addressing the issue Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that single-sex facilities in the Capitol complex would be “reserved for individuals of that biological sex.”
“It is important to note that each member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol,” Johnson wrote in a statement. “Women deserve women’s only spaces.”
During a news conference Tuesday, the speaker said the House’s Republican majority would treat every lawmaker with “dignity and respect,” adding that leadership would accommodate for all members of Congress.
Despite claims by Mace and other Republican lawmakers that restricting restroom access for trans people protects women and girls, there is little evidence that gender-inclusive facilities carry such risk. A 2018 study from the University of California Los Angeles found that state-level nondiscrimination laws for public restrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms had no bearing on the frequency of criminal incidents in those spaces — and that privacy and safety violations in public facilities were “exceedingly rare.”
And a separate 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law concluded that, from a “scientific and evidence-based perspective,” there is no current evidence that allowing trans people access to gender-conforming restrooms results in a higher incidence of sexual offenses, though the researchers noted that arguments for and against inclusive facilities are “not simply answered by science.”
On the flipside, transgender people themselves report harassment when using public restrooms. According to a 2015 survey from the National Center for Transgender Equality, 12% of respondents said that they had been verbally harassed when using a bathroom. More than half of respondents said they avoided using public restrooms in the past year because they were afraid of being confronted, the survey said.
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Democrats have accused their Republican colleagues of “bullying” the incoming McBride. The lawmaker herself has dismissed the GOP attacks as a distraction, saying that Congress should be focused on policy issues rather than “culture wars.”
As of Wednesday, Mace’s legislation had yet to be assigned to a committee for debate.
The lawmaker’s bill — and Johnson’s announcement of the new House policy — coincided with Transgender Day of Remembrance, observed annually since 1999 and aimed at drawing attention to violence against trans people.