(The Center Square) – A California legislator's new bill aims to keep transgender women out of women’s restrooms and locker rooms.
Assembly Bill 1998 was introduced by Assemblywoman Leticia Castillo, R-Corona, after she heard of women’s bad experiences in intimate spaces involving men who are transitioning to becoming women.
“For me, this bill starts with a very simple principle: protecting women and protecting womanhood in spaces where privacy and dignity matter the most,” Castillo said during a news conference Tuesday announcing the bill. “Restrooms, locker rooms and changing areas are places where women and girls are often vulnerable. Sometimes they are undressed, sometimes with their children and expecting the most basic level of privacy.”
While the bill would separate restrooms and other intimate spaces by biological sex, it would still allow single-occupancy bathrooms to stay gender-neutral and would not require businesses to rebuild facilities, Castillo told reporters at the Capitol in Sacramento.
“Californians believe that everyone should be treated with dignity, respect and fairness, including our LGBT community members,” Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego and a self-identified gay Republican, said during the press conference. “This bill is about a two-way street. Trans individuals have a right to be respected and to be treated with dignity and fairness, but so do our girls.”
A sign near the podium during the press conference read, "We do not consent to naked men in our locker rooms."
Meanwhile, in a legal brief from the Williams Institute and the UCLA School of Law, no evidence was found in their research to show that harm was done to non-transgender people in restrooms where transgender people were present.
But during Tuesday's press conference, women spoke about their experiences seeing transgender people harassing non-transgender people in women’s locker rooms in gyms. The speakers ranged from young women to middle-aged women who said they experienced or saw other women experience harm from transgender people who were allowed in women’s restrooms, locker rooms and other spaces.
Other states have grappled with the issue of transgender people using women’s bathrooms.
In Georgia, a police officer was let go after confronting a transgender person who used a women’s restroom after a woman with two children complained, while a public school district in Colorado pushed back against federal allegations that the school district violated Title IX by allowing transgender children to compete in school sports. Also in Colorado, enough signatures were collected to put an initiative on the Nov. 3 ballot to ban transgender athletes from girls' and women's teams in K-12 and college.
Voters in Maine could also decide whether to allow transgender athletes to compete in school sports in a November 2026 ballot measure, which backers said in February had the required number of signatures to get on the ballot.
In California on Tuesday, a Democratic lawmaker criticized AB 1998.
“I think that bill’s very discussion is baseless,” Assemblyman Alex Lee, D-Milpitas, told The Center Square.
LGBTQ groups, including the Sacramento LGBT Community Center, the Gender Health Center in Sacramento and the North County LGBT Resource Center, did not respond to The Center Square on Tuesday.
Castillo said a committee hearing has not been scheduled for AB 1998, but added she remains hopeful about the bill moving forward this year in the Legislature.
