How Texas' “bathroom bills” have evolved over a decade

[Jessica_Rose]

How Texas' "bathroom bills" have evolved over a decade

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/how-texas-bathroom-bills-have-evolved-over-a-decade/ar-AA1KRvCZ?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=4ab994752a3347fae5c058c8a0a8c08e&ei=123

Story by Ayden Runnels (20 Aug 2025)

Safara Malone cherishes the public school environment she grew up in that accepted who she was as a young trans woman. The acceptance, the 20-year-old said, allowed her to flourish and focus on her education, giving her the support she needed to get to where she is now, as a Harvard University student.

That support was fragile, though. For half of her life, Texas lawmakers have made targeting the rights and public privileges of trans people in the state a legislative priority, she said. At the forefront of that push has been a so-far unsuccessful effort to restrict what bathrooms transgender people can use, something Malone said would have infringed on the little moments that made her high school experience so positive.

With the second special session of 2025 underway, Gov. Greg Abbott has again placed bathroom restrictions based on sex assigned at birth on the legislative agenda.

Now Senate Bill 8 in the second session, the bill and its lower chamber counterpart, House Bill 52, are the latest iterations of the roughly 16 bathroom bill proposals across more than 20 different bills and dozens of other anti-trans legislation filed in Texas since 2015. The two bills incorporate provisions from several of these previous versions and other bills to shift how transgender people would be treated in bathrooms, prisons and family violence shelters.

[Lori Dee]

It would be beneficial if Congress were required to submit supporting evidence demonstrating a need for any legislation. They would not be able to make a law because a President wants it. They could not submit a bill just because they wanted it.

Annual budgets would be easy to justify. Special projects like infrastructure upgrades, also easy. Regulating where less than 1% of the population can pee? Good luck with that.