Republican bathroom bill targets Congress’s first transgender member

After Delaware elected the first ever openly transgender member of Congress earlier this month, a Republican introduced a bill to ban her from using the bathroom that corresponds with her gender identity.

The South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace introduced the bill, which comes a little less than two months before Sarah McBride is due to be sworn in as the first openly transgender member of Congress. The measure would charge the House sergeant at arms with enforcing the bill, though it is unclear exactly how, according to the Hill.

“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace told reporters on Monday, according to CNN. She added that Mace “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop”.

McBride responded on X by saying the issue was a distraction.

“Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness,” she wrote on X.

“This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing. We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars. Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on.”

Mace’s bill comes as Republicans have attacked transgender people as part of a broader political culture war strategy, limiting what bathrooms they can use and the youth sports teams they can play on. Fourteen states currently have laws that prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights group.

Laurel Powell, a Human Rights campaign spokesperson, said the measure would also target trans people who had worked in the Capitol for years.

“Let’s call this what it is: rather than focusing on issues that matter to Americans, Representative Mace is seeking a spotlight by cruelly discriminating against her incoming colleague, the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress,” Powell said. “This is merely a political charade by a grown-up bully. It is another warning sign that the incoming anti-equality House majority will continue to focus on targeting LGBTQ+ people rather than the cost of living, price gouging or any of the problems the American people elected them to solve.”

Many of Donald Trump’s ads in the final stretch of his 2024 campaign focused on transgender rights, including one that flooded the airwaves highlighting Kamala Harris’s support in 2019 for gender-affirming care. The campaign spent at least $17m on the ad, according to NPR, which included the tagline “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”

Mace was once a moderate Republican from a competitive district in South Carolina. In 2021, she supported a bill that would have offered some limited protections for LGBTQ+ people in public life.

“I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality,” Mace told the Washington Examiner at the time. “No one should be discriminated against.”

But after state Republicans redrew the district to be much more safely Republican, she moved significantly more to the right.

The US supreme court said earlier this year the gerrymandering of her district was legal, though a lower court found that Republicans had undertaken an “effective bleaching” by removing 30,000 Black voters from the district.

Also on Monday, the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly misgendered McBride in a now-viral video where she was asked about Mace’s bill.

“I support a resolution that keeps all biological men out of women’s bathrooms, locker rooms and private places. Not only here in the Capitol complex, our office buildings, but all taxpayer-funded facilities,” Greene replied.

She was also asked how one would “check if someone is qualified to use the ladies’ restroom? Obviously there’s a new openly transgender member of Congress.”

“Which is a man,” said Greene. “He’s a man. He’s a biological male. So he is not allowed to use our women’s restrooms, our women’s gym, our locker rooms and spaces that are specified for women. He’s a biological male,” Greene said. “He’s got plenty of places he can go.”

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