Montana Proposes Trans Bathroom Ban in Public Spaces
GOP-sponsored bill would ban transgender individuals from multi-occupancy facilities that do not match their assigned sex at birth.
Republicans in Montana are considering a nasty piece of anti-transgender legislation as they hear a proposed bill to ban transgender individuals from bathrooms aligning with their gender identity.
As reported by journalist Erin Reed on her Erin in the Morning Substack, the measure, introduced by State Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe (R-Billings), would prohibit transgender people from entering multi-occupancy bathrooms designated for a specific sex that does not align with an individual’s assigned sex at birth.
The ban would apply to all “public buildings,” which is defined as any facility owned or leased by a public agency. It would encompass bathrooms in government buildings, public colleges and universities, public schools, libraries, museums, state airports, publicly-owned hospitals, and public parks and rest stops.
The bill defines sex as being either male or female, determined by one’s chromosomes and reproductive organs and their ability to produce either eggs or sperm.
The definition extends those classifications to intersex individuals who “would otherwise fall within this definition, but for a biological or genetic condition.”
The bill claims its purpose is to “preserve restrooms, changing rooms, and sleeping quarters for women in facilities where women have traditionally been afforded privacy and safety from acts of abuse, harassment, sexual assault, and violence committed by men.”
The bill contains a few exceptions in which members of the opposite sex may enter a sex-segregated bathroom, such as when a custodian is cleaning facilities, when emergency medical personnel are responding to a person in distress, when a law enforcement agent has reason to stop a crime in progress, or when an adult is accompanying a child or person with disabilities to help them use the facilities.
The measure, which received a committee hearing on January 10, has 35 co-sponsors.
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The bill comes after Montana’s Republican rules committee narrowly rejected a proposal to prohibit transgender State Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D-Missoula) from using women’s restrooms at the state capitol.
However, both Zephyr and SJ Howell, the first non-binary person elected to the Montana Legislature, would be impacted by the proposed bathroom ban for “public buildings.”
The bill’s sponsor, Seekins-Crowe, previously made headlines in 2023 when she gave an inflammatory speech about suicide as part of defending her support for a bill banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
Referencing her adult daughter — who is cisgender — as an example of someone who had struggled with suicidal ideation, Seekins-Crowe said she would not give in to “emotional manipulation” by allowing a suicidal child to undergo a gender transition.
The ban on gender-affirming care ultimately passed the legislature and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte. That law has since been blocked by a state judge, whose ruling was upheld by the Montana Supreme Court last month.
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