Across the country, a wave of anti-transgender legislation is reshaping access to public space. As of April, 44 bathroom-related bills are under consideration, with six already enacted in states including Florida, Idaho, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. Several of these laws impose steep fines and serious legal consequences. In Idaho, for instance, a violation could result in a felony conviction and up to five years in prison. Even the Idaho Fraternal Order of Police raised concerns on who would implement the restrictions, noting in comments to the Idaho Capitol Sun:

“In many circumstances, there is no clear or reasonable way for officers to make that determination without engaging in questioning or investigative actions that could be viewed as invasive and inappropriate.”

As an African American, I see unmistakable parallels between the denial of restroom access to transgender people today and the segregation of the Jim Crow era, when Black Americans were barred from lunch counters, water fountains, and restrooms in public spaces. As a lesbian, I also recognize how policing who belongs in which bathroom harms not only transgender people, but also nonbinary and gender-nonconforming individuals - especially when judgments are made based on appearance, such as labeling a woman “too butch” or a man “too effeminate.”

Public restrooms were a flashpoint during the Jim Crow era, much as they are now. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, and religion, mandating the desegregation of public accommodations, including restrooms. Decades later, the administration of Barack Obama expanded federal protections to include LGBTQ+ Americans. However, in 2017, the administration of Donald Trump rescinded guidance that had allowed transgender students to use facilities aligned with their gender identity, arguing that existing civil rights law did not explicitly cover gender identity.

Support for these restrictive laws is often rooted in a literal interpretation of religious doctrine that frames biological sex as fixed and binary akin to skin color. This perspective continues to influence public policy debates, even as it collides with the lived realities of transgender people. Meanwhile, many of these bills are justified through claims about safety - invoking fears of predators, voyeurs, rapists and assaults in public restrooms. Yet there is no credible evidence to date that trans-inclusive policies increase such risks. In fact, research consistently shows the opposite: transgender individuals are far more likely to face harassment or violence when denied access to appropriate facilities.

The slogan, “A trans person peed here and no one was harmed,” cuts through the transphobic and fear mongering rhetoric. It highlights a simple truth: inclusion does not create danger - exclusion does. Denying access to safe restrooms places transgender people at real risk, reinforcing the urgent need for inclusive, all-gender or gender-neutral restrooms.

However, this struggle is not new for transgender Americans accessing public bathrooms. Anti-trans “bathroom bills” gained national attention in 2016, when North Carolina passed HB2, the first state law restricting transgender restroom access. Since then, the fight has continued to center on a fundamental question: who has the right to exist freely in public space?

As Laverne Cox explained in a 2017 interview underscoring how these policies reach far beyond bathrooms - they shape whether transgender people can safely participate in everyday life.

“When trans people can’t access public bathrooms we can’t go to school effectively, go to work effectively, access health-care facilities - it’s about us existing in public space,” Cox stated on the MSNBC show “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” in 2017. “And those who oppose trans people having access to the facilities consistent with how we identify know that all the things they claim don’t actually happen. It’s really about us not existing - about erasing trans people.”

Cox is a black transwoman actress and activist. She is widely known for her breakout role as Sophia Burset, a transgender woman incarcerated for credit-card fraud in the 2013 Netflix series, Orange is the New Black.

What emerges from this debate is a troubling pattern. Conservatives’ political and religious movements have always been a demographic group obsessed in regulating bodies, particularly policing this nation’s genitals - what they do, how we use them, what body orifices they enter. Now with transgender bathroom bills across the country - where they to go to relieve themselves? These bathroom bills effectively criminalize a routine human need, turning it into what amounts to a “toilet crime.”

However, the real crime lies elsewhere: in the failure of lawmakers to protect the dignity and safety of transgender people. Access to a restroom is not a privilege - it is a basic human necessity. And when that access is denied, it becomes a question not just of policy, but of fundamental equality. This is the type of injustice African Americans faced during Jim Crow America.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

member and Columnist, The Reverend

Irene Monroe is an ordained minister,

motivational speaker and she speaks for

a sector of society that is frequently

invisible. Rev. Monroe does a weekly

Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on

WGBH (89.7 FM), on Boston Public Radio

and a weekly Friday segment “The Take”

on New England Channel NEWS (NECN).

She’s a Huffington Post blogger and a

syndicated religion columnist. Her

columns appear in cities across the

country and in the U.K, and Canada. Also

she writes a column in the Boston home

LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows and

Cambridge Chronicle. A native of

Brooklyn, NY, Rev. Monroe graduated

from Wellesley College and Union

Theological Seminary at Columbia

University, and served as a pastor at an

African-American church in New Jersey

before coming to Harvard Divinity School

to do her doctorate. She has received the

Harvard University Certificate of

Distinction in Teaching several times

while being the head teaching fellow of

the Rev. Peter Gomes, the Pusey Minister

in the Memorial Church at Harvard who is

the author of the best seller, THE GOOD

BOOK. She appears in the film For the

Bible Tells Me So and was profiled in the

Gay Pride episode of In the Life, an

Emmy-nominated segment. Monroe’s

coming out story is profiled in “CRISIS:

40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social,

and Religious Pain and Trauma of

Growing up Gay in America" and in

"Youth in Crisis." In 1997 Boston

Magazine cited her as one of Boston's 50

Most Intriguing Women, and was profiled

twice in the Boston Globe, In the Living

Arts and The Spiritual Life sections for

her LGBT activism. Her papers are at the

Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College's

research library on the history of women

in America. Her website is

irenemonroe.com. Contact the Rev.

Monroe and BC.