21 states now limit transgender people's bathroom use, with criminal penalties in twohttps://www.advocate.com/politics/states-with-transgender-bathroom-bans 🔗Ryan Adamczeski (23 Feb 2026)
Nearly half of the states in the country want to check what's in your pants before you can use the bathroom. Two make using the facilities in line with a person's gender identity a crime.
Twenty-one states ban transgender people from using the bathrooms that align with their gender identity in some form, according to the Movement Advancement Project. An additional four states — Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, and North Carolina — have laws defining "male" and "female" based on sex assigned at birth, which can affect trans people's bathroom use. In Kansas, a bathroom ban bill passed the GOP-dominated state legislature and was enacted into law despite the Democratic governor's veto.
Trans bathroom bans have been around for over a decade, with the first being North Carolina's H.B. 2. The 2016 law has since been partially overturned, but that hasn't stopped other states from following suit. Many similar bans have been enacted in just the past two years, making up a fraction of the hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills proposed annually.
Here are all of the states that have trans bathroom bans, two of which criminalize using the "wrong" restroom...
