House Bill 2782 says nothing in Washington state civil-rights law prohibits a private or public place from limiting transgender people’s access to restrooms and other such facilities when someone is “preoperative, nonoperative” or doesn’t have the genitals of the gender for which the facility is set aside.
Advertisement
But the nondiscrimination bill doesn’t have support from two of the state’s most powerful business groups.
“We were extremely disappointed to see the bill move out of the Senate and will remain engaged in our efforts to oppose this harmful repeal”, Andrea Piper-Wentland, executive director of the group, told The Daily Signal. This bill also does not even pretend to protect transgender Hoosiers, excluding them entirely, which is completely unacceptable.
No matter what happens with the bill in the Senate, a similar version will not pass out of the House. She says lawmakers don’t need to intervene. “I feel that there was some lack of process by the Human Rights Commission”, she said.
After companies such as Eli Lilly and Angie’s List threatened to pull their business from the state, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican, amended the language of the religious objections law in April 2015 to specify that the ordinance could not be used as a legal defense to deny services to LGBT people.
Washington isn’t the only state where residents are up-in-arms over restroom-use mandates ordered by non-elected government agencies.
It’s an awkward time for GOP lawmakers, who are under pressure to adopt LGBT civil rights protections after an uproar last spring over the religious-objections law.
The hope amongst trans law advocates is that the increased discrimination the transgender community is now facing is a backlash to increased trans visibility; a passing storm of anger.
The Senate committee still needs to vote on the bill.
The future of the bill is far from certain.
Ever since IN drew widespread and mostly negative attention a year ago for a controversial religious objections law, Republican legislative leaders have sought a way to add LGBT civil rights protections into state law while also carving out exemptions for people with sincerely held religious beliefs.
One bill to be heard Wednesday would extend discrimination protections to LGBT people in public accommodation, housing and employment. It was taken “without any input” from legislators and deprives women and children of “their right to privacy and sense of security at school, at the workplace, at the store, at the recreation center”, Becker said in an e-mail bulletin to constituents.
Lawmakers have struggled to address LGBT rights since the furor last spring over the law, which they quickly made changes to.
Advertisement
“It’s a unsafe thing to go down [this path] whenever you are elevating sexual behavior or elevating that to a protected status at the cost of religious freedom, obviously”, Denton states.
