North Carolina Senate proposal again seeks to bar transgender people from specified public restrooms

A group of North Carolina state senators is seeking to enact a new ban on transgender people using bathrooms and other single-sex facilities that correspond to their gender identity, nearly a decade after the state’s infamous 2016 “bathroom bill.”

Filed Tuesday, Senate Bill 516, entitled the “Women’s Safety and Protection Act,” would bar trans people from using unisex restrooms, changing facilities, and sleeping quarters that correspond to their gender identities. It would also define “male” and “female” in state law strictly according to assigned sex at birth and prohibit the modification of sex markers on birth certificates and driver’s licenses.

Introduced by lead sponsors Sen. Vickie Sawyer (R-Iredell) and Sen. Brad Overcash (R-Gaston), the bill states its purpose as twofold: “to clarify and reconcile the meaning of the terms biological sex, gender, and any other related terms in State law” and to “provide protections for women against sexual assault, harassment, and violence” and other “acts of abuse committed by biological men.”

Joining Sawyer and Overcash in sponsoring the bill are Republican state senators Lisa Barnes, Warren Daniel, Bobby Hanig, and Ralph Hise. Hise and Daniel voted in favor of the House Bill 2 bathroom ban in 2016, while the other sponsors were not yet serving in the legislature. None of the bill’s sponsors responded to a request for comment.

A clash over public safety

Unlike the 2016 ban, Senate Bill 516 takes aim at a smaller scope of facilities — prisons and other confinement facilities, domestic violence and rape crisis centers, and public schools — and specifically those that receive state funds.

But where that bill’s scope was limited to bathrooms and changing rooms, this proposal also specifies sleeping quarters, and its emphasis on shelters has prompted concerns from civil rights advocates that trans women seeking protection from domestic violence and sexual abuse could be placed at risk for further violence.

“Transgender people already face higher rates of harassment and violence than cisgender peers,” said Reighlah Collins, policy counsel at the ACLU of North Carolina. “This is just setting up trans people for further attacks and further vulnerability in these places where people are supposed to be safe.”

The bill includes exemptions for family use of facilities, rendering medical or emergency aid, performing custodial work, inspections, and maintenance, and law enforcement activities. It also excludes policies at domestic violence and rape crisis centers to accommodate minors and individuals who require physical assistance.

The legislation would require that all bathrooms, changing facilities, and sleeping quarters at the facilities it covers be used by individuals of one sex at a time, not including those exemptions. And it prohibits public schools from hosting events where students share sleeping quarters from grouping together students of different sexes unless they have received permission from parents or guardians.

Jazmynne Cruz, a spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ rights organization Equality NC, wrote in an emailed statement that the group was “disheartened” by a bill they view as “yet another attack on our transgender community.”

“As we continue to learn more about the implications of this bill, we remain committed to keeping you informed and sharing meaningful ways to support our transgender neighbors,” Cruz wrote. “Our fight for equality continues, and we are stronger together.”

Advocates for the bill framed the issue in terms of protecting women. Ashley Vaughan, the press director for the North Carolina Values Coalition — a religious right advocacy organization — wrote in a statement in response to the bill that “men are men, women are women, and men should not be allowed to rob women of their safety and privacy.”

“Defining male and female by biology in North Carolina law is important because when men can identify as women it invalidates hundreds of laws and policies designed to protect women,” Vaughan wrote. “We need to protect women and girls in private spaces where they are vulnerable.”

Collins argued that such framing is disingenuous, and that the bill’s enforcement mechanism — which opens up facilities and state agencies that do not comply to lawsuits — risks exposing all women to the use of invasive techniques to determine individuals’ birth sex, such as physical searches and examinations.

“Senate Bill 516 would leave all women — transgender or not — vulnerable to accusations and discrimination based on how well they conform to someone else’s standard for their gender,” Collins said. “If they don’t look like what people expect people to look like in that bathroom, they are likely to face pushback and really setting them up for danger.”

‘There will be backlash’

Less than a decade ago, North Carolina experienced an enormous national and international backlash after the implementation of HB 2, the “bathroom bill” that barred trans people from using public restrooms corresponding to their gender identity throughout the state.

The bill prompted business leaders around the country to pull projects from North Carolina in a show of protest, costing the state an estimated $3.76 billion according to the Associated Press. The state also lost out on major sporting events, including the 2017 NBA All-Star Game, which was set to be played in Charlotte but ultimately moved to New Orleans.

Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University, said that context makes him “surprised” that senators would broach another bathroom bill, even as national sentiment has moved right on some trans issues in the intervening decade.

“I expected the General Assembly to lean into bills around gender-affirming care for minors and about trans women in sports — two parts of the trans issue where they seem to be on the side of public opinion,” he said. “I was a little bit surprised to see a bill get introduced that seems to go back in time, to sort of give away the rhetorical advantage they seem to have on this issue.”

Cooper noted that top Republican leaders — like Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, whose support, he said, would give “a golden highway to passage” for almost any bill — had not joined onto SB 516 as a sponsor, suggesting there may not be an appetite among leadership for such a far-reaching measure.

“The bathroom issue, the driver’s license issue — those seem to be places where the public might be a little bit more on the trans rights side,” Cooper said. “I could see that kind of backlash [that occurred after HB 2]. I can almost guarantee, if this becomes law, there will be lawsuits, there will be backlash.”

But President Donald Trump won reelection in part by launching broad attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris for her support of transgender rights, with campaign ads castigating her for being “for they/them” while Trump was “for you” and for stating during the 2020 campaign that she would support government-funded gender-affirming surgery for undocumented immigrants.

“Trump got this right, and now North Carolina got this right,” wrote Vaughan, the North Carolina Values Coalition spokesperson.

And other Republican legislatures states have passed laws restricting trans rights with far less pushback than North Carolina received in 2016. Should SB 516 become law, North Carolina would be the fourth states to codify “male” and “female” by assigned sex at birth, the seventh state forbidding the change of sex markers on birth certificates, and the 15th to bar trans people from at least some single-sex spaces aligning with their gender identity.

A broader anti-trans agenda

SB 516 comes amid a wave of legislation in North Carolina seeking to curtail the rights of trans people to express their gender identity and restrict their access to gender-affirming healthcare.

In 2023, North Carolina banned gender-affirming care for minors and barred trans student athletes from participating in women’s sports at most schools, two issues that Trump championed on the campaign trail the following year.

“This is part of a coordinated, larger strategy across the country to push transgender people out of public and civic life, despite the clear signs that this is discriminatory and doesn’t work,” said Collins, the ACLU policy counsel.

A group of GOP lawmakers also introduced a bill Wednesday that would seek to expand parents’ access to their kids’ medical records, examinations and treatment, including discussions of gender identity. House Bill 519, labeled the “Parents’ Medical Bill of Rights” by its sponsors, would grant parents the right “to access and review all medical records” of their child.

It was prompted, lawmakers say, by constituent complaints that common medical practice allowed children starting at 12 to opt out of sharing information with their parents.

“We must stop operating under a system that sidelines parents and assumes institutions knows better,” said Rep. Jennifer Balkcom (R-Henderson), who said her son had just turned 12 and had seen medical professionals asking for his consent to share information.

“I’m paying for the insurance,” added Rep. Brian Biggs (R-Randolph). “I want to be involved.”

At the core of that medical practice is a 50-year-old law created to allow minors to discuss sensitive medical topics, including pregnancy and venereal disease, with a doctor. But the bill sponsors say it’s led to conversations and decisions they don’t support — such as being vaccinated for COVID-19 or having discussions about sexuality.

“This has to stop,” Biggs said.

If the bill were to become law, it would likely have wide-ranging impacts on sensitive medical discussions for children — including those dealing with pregnancy, sexuality and gender-affirming care. (In North Carolina, gender-affirming care is banned until age 18; abortion is banned after 12 weeks of pregnancy.)

Neither bill has yet to be scheduled for a committee hearing.

NC Newsline’s Galen Bacharier contributed reporting.