Sarah McBride Criticized for Complying with Restroom Ban
Transgender advocates criticize Congresswoman-elect, saying she's setting a dangerous precedent by acquiescing to Republican demands.
U.S. Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.) said she will comply with House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) newly announced policy banning transgender individuals from using restrooms and other facilities that align with their gender identity.
On Wednesday, November 20, Johnson decreed that all single-sex facilities in the U.S. Capitol complex will be reserved for individuals of that biological sex. His edict came in support of a vile, transphobic effort by U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) seeking to ban McBride, the first out transgender person elected to Congress, from women’s restrooms.
Mace has since said she’s introducing a broader bill to ban all transgender women from women’s facilities on all federal properties.
Republicans who support the ban say that women-only spaces are necessary to protect the safety and privacy of women and girls.
They also point to the fact that every individual member of Congress has their own bathroom in their office, and argue that McBride can choose to use that, or any gender-neutral or single-use restrooms within the Capitol complex, if she does not want to use the men’s restroom.
McBride initially said that the controversy over which restroom she uses was a manufactured one that Republicans were using to distract from more important political issues, such as housing, health care and child care.
Following Johnson’s announcement, McBride sought to distance herself from the fight by saying she’d comply with the decree.
“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms, I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families,” she wrote in a post on X. “Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them. This effort to distract from the real issues facing this country hasn’t distracted me over the last several days.”
I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. pic.twitter.com/bCuv7pIZBY
— Sarah McBride (@SarahEMcBride) November 20, 2024
“Serving in the 119th Congress will be the honor of a lifetime, and I continue to look forward to getting to know my future colleagues on both sides of the aisle,” McBride added. “Each of us were sent here because voters saw in us something that they value. I have loved seeing those qualities in the future colleagues that I’ve met and I look forward to seeing those qualities in every member come January. I hope all of my colleagues will seek to do the same with me.”
Many in the transgender community are deeply unhappy with McBride’s decision to acquiesce to the transgender restroom ban. They argue her framing of the issue as a “distraction” gives Democrats an excuse to distance themselves from their past support for transgender rights to avoid anti-trans political attacks.
As journalist Erin Reed argued in her Erin in the Morning Substack, McBride’s decision to comply has broader implications, implicitly sending a message to lawmakers that similar policies or even nondiscrimination laws with carve-outs banning transgender people from certain public accommodations are some sort of “acceptable compromise.”
Reed argued that there is no indication that Republicans will stop their assault on transgender rights, meaning that McBride’s decision not to fight the restroom ban may only encourage Republicans to push for more policies aimed at denying her transgender identity, such as dress code restrictions or which honorifics are used to address her on the House floor.
Alejandra Caraballo, a transgender advocate and clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, offered a similar critique of the Capitol restroom ban. “This isn’t just about her,” Caraballo said. “These rules apply to trans staffers and interns who do not have the protections and privilege that she has.”
Ash Orr, a transgender organizer in West Virginia, also criticized the Delaware Democrat.
“Rep. McBride’s messaging essentially suggests that if a federal ban is enacted, trans people should simply comply,” Orr said. “While I understand the difficult position she is in, she holds a position of immense power and privilege. She should be using that power to defend and protect her community, not falling in line. Trans lives are at stake.”
Several of McBride’s fellow Democrats blasted the restroom ban, with U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) telling reporters that the ban effectively deputizes the House Sergeant-at-Arms to play restroom monitor.
Ocasio-Cortez noted that any law enforcement officials seeking to enforce the ban are more likely to end up harassing or barring cisgender women who don’t conform to stereotypical notions of beauty or dress, rather than any transgender woman.
“The idea that Nancy Mace wants little girls and women to drop trou … in front of who, an investigator?” she said. “Frankly, all it does is allow these Republicans to go around and bully any woman who isn’t wearing a skirt, because they think she might not look ‘woman enough.’ People have a right to express themselves, to dress how they want, and to be who they are. And if a woman doesn’t look woman enough to a Republican, they want to be able to inspect your genitals to use a bathroom? It’s disgusting. And everybody, no matter how you feel on this issue, should reject it completely. … They’re endangering women, they’re endangering girls of all kinds, and everyone should reject it. It’s gross.”
U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) slammed Mace, telling Axios, “[She’s a] huge attention getter, so this is part of her attention-getting fetish… I just don’t understand why bathrooms are top of mind for her, why she’s thinking about where future members are going to piss and shit.”
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