House committee debates restroom restrictions for transgender Missourians

[Jessica_Rose ✅]

House committee debates restroom restrictions for transgender Missourians

https://missouriindependent.com/2026/03/03/house-committee-debates-restroom-restrictions-for-transgender-missourians/ 🔗

Annelise Hanshaw (3 March 2026)

With blonde hair flowing over her shoulders and spilling onto a blousy blue mini dress, Landon Patterson sat in front of the Missouri House Emerging Issues Committee Monday.

The committee was debating bills that sought to separate public restrooms and changing rooms by sex as assigned at birth, rather than gender identity. The bills varied in scope, but they all would require Patterson to use the men's restroom, which she hasn't used in over a decade.

"It caused no harm (to use women's facilities), not to my classmates, not to my school, not to my community," she said. "It gave me dignity and allowed me to focus on my education instead of fighting to exist."

The hearing came three days after lawmakers in neighboring Kansas passed a law invalidating the licenses of those who have changed their gender marker and barring transgender Kansans from using public restrooms that align with their gender identity.

The bill, filed by Republican state Rep. Becky Laubinger of Park Hills, would require all public buildings to separate restrooms, changing rooms and sleeping areas by her proposed definition of sex.

It is a protective measure, she said, for spaces where people are "most vulnerable." She gave a secondhand story about two men "who made no attempt to look female" who used a women's restroom and claimed they identified as women.

[Devlyn ✅]

I am but a simpleton.... second hand story means hearsay, right?