Texas will likely be the next U.S. state to ban trans people from public bathrooms.
SB 8, which passed in the Texas senate this week and is expected to be signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott, also bans trans people from using locker rooms and being placed in facilities that align with their gender identity while incarcerated.
The bill is the latest of several anti-trans measures passed in Texas. But SB 8 is the culmination of a decade-long effort that hasn’t been successful until now.
Roughly 16 bathroom bill proposals have been filed across 20 different bills in the state since 2015, but they have often died in the House. That changed when Abbott included the issue in a special legislative session, resulting in the House voting 86 to 45 and the senate voting 18 to 8 to pass it.
What’s even more notable are the financial repercussions of the bill. Violators will face a $25,000 fine for the first offence and a whopping $125,000 fine for the second, making it the most financially punitive bathroom bill in the country.
Nineteen U.S. states have passed some form of an anti-trans bathroom bill since 2016, with a sizable resurgence in the last few years. But research has shown that bathroom bans do not make anyone safer, nor is there a correlation between trans-inclusive bathrooms and crimes in public restrooms or locker rooms.
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