Missouri Advances Three Anti-Trans Bathroom Ban Bills In One Night

“This is a make-or-break moment with what just happened in Kansas.”

Missouri Capitol // DVIDS

This week’s late-night bathroom bill marathon makes Missouri one of the nation’s leaders in the realm of anti-trans legislation this year. On Monday alone, three such bills were heard by the “Emerging Issues” committee in the state’s House of Representatives. The committee will vote on the bills this upcoming Monday. All of them targeted, at least in part, trans people in bathrooms.

“This is a make-or-break moment with what just happened in Kansas,” Rep. Wick Thomas, the state’s only openly trans representative, told Erin in the Morning.

Kansas, which sits on the western border of Missouri, recently and suddenly revoked many trans people’s driver’s licenses and state IDs. The measure was surreptitiously snuck into a trans bathroom ban bill at the eleventh hour, and Missouri could see Republicans try a similar tactic with as little as 24 hours’ notice.

“I could see them trying something similar here, if people don’t rise up right now,” they said.

This slate of Missouri bills is about more than just where trans people pee. While none of these bills explicitly criminalize trans individuals for using any particular restroom, they open up institutions to legal liability if they don’t discriminate against trans people and, more broadly, segregate various kinds of facilities by assigned sex at birth. And if anyone thinks they see a trans person in the “wrong” restroom, they may be able to sue

HB 2536, brought by Rep. Becky Laubinger, may be the most consequential. It would enshrine a binary, unscientific, and arbitrary definition of sex into law based on someone’s perceived capacity to produce certain sex gametes, functionally stripping intersex people and trans people from recognition by the state. And if a group of people doesn’t exist, then it becomes nearly impossible to argue that their rights have been violated in court.

Laubinger’s bill would require Missouri-owned facilities and institutions to adopt these definitions and exclude trans women from women’s spaces as well as trans men from men’s spaces. This includes bathrooms, locker rooms, or living quarters in government-run schools, buildings, parks, domestic violence shelters, airports, rest stops, sports stadiums, and so on.

Although the bill carves out exceptions for emergency responders or caretakers of disabled people, it opens up everyone, of any gender or sex, cisgender and transgender alike, to public scrutiny over what genitals they may or may not have.

Then, there’s HB 2075, sponsored by Rep. Brandon Phelps. If passed, this bill would trigger a statewide anti-trans bathroom ban in government-owned facilities. Some institutions have spent thousands if not millions of dollars on bathroom renovations over the last few years so that multi-occupancy restrooms could be more private for and accessible to all, including trans folks, families, and the disabled community.

Having to go back to the drawing board would be yet another drain on taxpayer dollars and government time and resources. “Failure to comply with the provisions of this section shall result in revocation or withholding of state funding for the entity that operates the public building,” the bill reads.

Finally, HB 1893, sponsored by Rep. Wendy Hausman, is an “emergency” bill, meaning it would be fast-tracked and go into effect immediately if it passed. That policy would give private schools the green light to segregate trans kids with impunity. It would also make municipal governments foot the bill for any legal fees should they try to intervene with local anti-discrimination ordinances.

Monday’s hours-long bathroom hearing, like the bills themselves, was fraught with an excruciating redundancy. It had all the hallmarks of a scene that’s played out thousands of times, over thousands of hours, in statehouses and courthouses across the country now.

Conservatives said the laws were necessary to keep women safe; opponents of the bill pointed out that such laws make everyone less safe and open up young girls to having their gender and genitals questioned by anyone with an interest in the matter.

Democrats asked about the impacts it would have on intersex people; bill sponsors betrayed that they didn’t really know what that is or how it works.

Locals showed up in droves to oppose anti-trans measures; polished D.C. lobbyists from the Heritage Foundation and the Alliance Defending Freedom were flown in to voice their support.

Republicans argued that inclusive bathroom policies could facilitate acts of sexual violence; constituents pointed out that rape is already illegal, regardless of where it occurs. And as one mom of a trans girl pointed out, “Predators don’t obey signs.”

Meanwhile, trans people talked about the terrifying threats they face when unilaterally forced into the bathroom of their sex assigned at birth. One trans woman, a state employee, testified that she had been harassed and assaulted in the men’s room. Another speaker, a bald and bearded transgender man, said: “I’m scared of what will happen to me when someone sees me follow their little girl into the restroom—following the law, I’m supposed to go in that room.”

Rep. Elizabeth Fuchs, a Democrat who formerly worked with the statewide LGBT advocacy group PROMO, was especially unrelenting in her confrontation of right-wing lobbyists, who came with neat soundbite-sized talking points about the safety of women and girls.

“The Project 2025 plan is the elimination of trans people,” she said during the hearing. “While you’re over here telling me that you’re trying to protect women and girls, I’ll tell you what: I stand on the shoulders of those foremothers who carved out spaces so that we could be seen and feel safe. That is why I will, over and over again, unapologetically stand up for trans women, because all of this is coming from the same oppressors,” Fuchs said. “It’s all coming from the same folks who want to control women and control women’s bodies.”

At another point during the hearing, Rep. Thomas asked what would happen if and when law enforcement was called on someone presumed to be in the “wrong” bathroom. How would someone prove their “sex,” as defined by these bills, on the spot? How are law enforcement meant to respond?

“I’m sure [it] may happen,” Phelps said during questioning on his bill. “But it’s a hypothetical.”

In reality, this isn’t a hypothetical, but a terrifying daily reality for transgender people. In the past, even in states without bathroom bans, police have been called on transgender and cisgender people alike for using the “wrong” bathroom. This includes a report from a cisgender lesbian in Arizona last year, who felt she had to lift her shift to show male police officers her bra and breasts to prove her womanhood after they stormed the women’s room to confront her.

This risk is compounded for trans women and people of color. One expert witness, a transgender man, laid bare this threat in his testimony at the hearing. “If you call the police on me about a bathroom, you threaten my life as a Black man,” he said.

All of this is transpiring in Missouri during an election year. Lawmakers told Erin in the Morning it’s a distraction from the real issues at hand.

Rep. Emily Weber, who sits on the “Emerging Issues” committee, told Erin in the Morning that because she occupies a safe blue seat, she often spends time door-knocking for other candidates in more contentious districts.

“The conversations about the LGBTQIA community don’t come up at the doors,” she said. “This is not what people are discussing at the dinner table. They’re really concerned about how to make ends meet, how to pay doctors’ bills.”

Rep. Thomas, meanwhile, struck a defiant tone in their message to other trans Missourians as hundreds of hours and thousands—if not millions—of dollars are poured into these anti-trans attacks.

“I feel like people are always feeling like they’re on the defensive, but recognize that if you can—if the government is spending that much time on you, that is power,” Thomas said. “Flex that power.”

The committee vote on the bathroom bills will occur this Monday. If it passes—which it most likely will, given the Republican majority—it will move to the full House floor.

Constituents can call their state representatives, state senators, the Speaker and the Governor to express opposition to such measures. Missourians can also connect with on-the-ground LGBTQ advocacy groups like PROMO.

Meanwhile, this November, voters will weigh in on an amendment to the state constitution, which would ban gender-affirming care as well as abortions for minors.