Texas Sen. Mayes Middleton didn’t manage to get his transphobic bathroom bill — Senate Bill 240 — during the 89th Texas Legislature’s regular session (the bill didn’t even make it out of committee to the floor for a vote). But not to worry; Gov. Greg Abbott is giving Middleton another shot by including the bathroom ban in the agenda for the legislature’s special session, which convened today (Monday, July 21).
The regular session version of SB 240, called the Texas Women’s Privacy Act, would have banned transgender people from public restrooms and other gender-specific facilities (like locker rooms at the gym), and authorized both a civil penalty and a “private civil right of action.
Johnathan Gooch with Equality Texas said the bill included in the special session is pretty much the same old same old, “but with one change. There is some new language added that appears to create a separate bathroom for trans people or to at least allow state agencies to create separate bathrooms for trans people.”
But, Gooch warned, the measure goes beyond bathrooms and would result in the segregation and isolation of transgender people. “It was very wide-ranging implications for the trans community and the LGBTQ community.
“There’s certainly no need for it,” Gooch said of the measure. “It is a waste of everybody’s time. We need to be dealing with the flood issues. Instead, we are getting the same old stuff.”
Although Abbott put flood relief at the top of the special session list, the bathroom bill and a bill to further restrict access to abortions are also on the agenda, as is redistricting to change congressional district borders in the state. Some politicos have suggested that Abbott added the controversial bathroom bill and abortion restrictions to the special session call in hopes of drawing attention away from the fact that Republicans are trying to gerrymander district lines before Abbott sets a special election to replace the late Rep. Sylvester Turner, a Houston Democrat who died in March this year, in hopes of changing what has long been a strongly blue district into a red district and give the GOP a larger majority in Congress.
Speakers at a press conference sponsored today by Texas for All accused Abbott of using the special session to “[bring] Trump-style politics into Texas and [push] an extreme agenda.”
Gooch said that Equality Texas will be closely monitoring what happens during the special session and moving quickly to respond effectively.
“We will be at the Capitol for some sort of event every week during the special session,” Gooch said. “We will keep people updated through email and through our social media pages.”
Noting that time is of the essence due to the stepped-schedule of the special session, Gooch that anyone who “can get to the Capitol in an hour or so” sign up for Equality Texas’ rapid response team to help the organization fight anti-LGBTQ efforts in the Legislature.
— Tammye Nash