Rick Baumer/AP
In 2016, North Carolina became the first state in the country to pass a bathroom bill. This bill requires people to use the bathroom that matches the gender listed on their birth certificate.
There was a huge backlash and a statewide boycott. The political fallout led to the downfall of Republican Governor Pat McCrory.
Bathroom bills have made a comeback in recent years in 11 Republican-led states, from Florida to Utah. Mississippi lawmakers sent a bathroom bill to the governor last week. But again, high-profile boycotts, rollbacks of company expansions, and concert cancellations did not follow.
So what happened?
The path from 2016 to now has involved political strategizing, legislative polling, and explicit learning from past defeats. and women's sports.
2016: “A complete disaster.”
The national response to North Carolina's 2016 bathroom bill, House Bill 2, was unprecedented.
PayPal canceled an expansion plan that would have created 400 jobs, and the NCAA withdrew its tournament from the state. Performers from Bruce Springsteen to Cirque Du Soleil have canceled shows. The AP estimates that the state's lost business will cost the state $3.76 billion over the next 12 years.
Erin Reed, a journalist and activist who tracks LGBTQ policy, described it as “an absolute disaster for the state Republican Party.”
In 2017, the bill was withdrawn.
“For the next four years, anti-trans legislation was put on the back burner. They licked their wounds and stepped back, and they started making plans,” explains Erin Reed.
At first, Republicans across the country tried to distance themselves from the issue. In 2016, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized the North Carolina bill during a TODAY Show town hall.
A year later, he withdrew guidance that would have provided legal protections to transgender students who want to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity.
“This way there have been very few complaints. People just go and use the bathroom as they see fit,” he said at the time.
“I don’t think going into a bathroom war is a good use of our time,” Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said at the 2018 Florida Family Council GOP Governors Forum.
But five years later, DeSantis signed a bill making it a crime for transgender people to use public restrooms that do not match their assigned gender at birth.
Looking beyond North Carolina and beyond bathroom bills
Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project, a conservative think tank, helped bring transgender bathroom bills back to the political forefront. He said he has been meeting with North Carolina Gov. McCrory since 2016 to talk about what happened and begin strategizing.
Schilling said their main focus was on which countries would not be vulnerable to an economic boycott for any reason. And they decided two things.
“They can’t really boycott Texas. Texas is too big and an economic powerhouse,” Schilling explains. “And they certainly can’t boycott Florida, home of Walt Disney World.”
And they also looked beyond bathroom bills. Schilling said his group has considered bills that would exclude gender identity from civil rights laws or exclude trans women from domestic violence shelters. But nothing really clicked. Until a few years ago.
“The issue of women's sports was really the first issue that came to mind,” Schilling said, “because not only did it have the magic formula for gaining enormous public support among the American people, but politicians were willing to push for it and campaign for it.” said. that.”
And they did. By 2021, 10 states had passed laws banning transgender athletes from participating in women's sports. By 2024, it will reach half of the states in the United States.
Schilling said the trans sports bill opens the door for legislation to follow. Policies that limit gender-affirming childcare for children and limit how gender is discussed in schools. And return the bathroom bill.
“I don’t think we could have done that by just focusing on the bathroom,” Schilling says. “If it weren’t for the issue of women’s sports, I think I’d be dead right now.”
current landscape
With about half the country subject to LGBTQ restrictions, some observers argue that the kind of boycott that occurred in 2016 is not feasible. California last year repealed a ban on state travel to states with anti-LGBTQ policies.
“I think it’s a completely different time, because now it’s like a threshold issue to be a serious Republican,” says Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project.
In January, Utah became the 11th state to enact a bathroom bill requiring people to use restrooms in schools and government-owned buildings that correspond to their assigned gender at birth.
This year, lawmakers have introduced bathroom bills in several Republican-led states, including Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa and West Virginia.
But journalist Erin Reed wonders whether the bill's supporters will find the same support from regular voters when they face re-election.
“I don't think it's going to win the election. Now where they can win is in the primaries,” Reed says. “This isn’t the first or won’t be the last LGBTQ moral panic, and I think we’re in a time right now where people are hurting.”
The Biden administration is trying to block some bathroom policies, saying they violate Title IX's nondiscrimination rules. Republican lawmakers in several states are challenging the move in court.