Johnathan Gooch of LGBTQIA+ advocacy nonprofit Equality Texas spent most of last Thursday at the state Capitol in the company of colleagues, most of them trans, from the ACLU of Texas, the Human Rights Campaign, the Texas Freedom Network, and Lambda Legal. The day began hopefully, with the group singing protest songs outside the Texas House, while representatives filed in to debate Senate Bill 8, better known as the Bathroom Bill. But the mood grew somber, Gooch told us, as the debate dragged on and Republicans defeated any proposal by Democrats to soften the bill’s attack on trans rights.
“People were at the Capitol all day,” Gooch said. “But everything just felt so much heavier than any other floor debate I’ve been to. And I think a lot of it has to do with the very real-world implications that trans people are bracing for.”
Republicans approved SB 8 on a 86-45 vote; Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to sign it into law. The bill will force people in public K-12 schools, public universities, and government buildings – including family violence shelters, prisons, and jails – to use bathrooms that match their birth gender. It relies on what critics call a bounty hunter system, empowering private citizens to file civil lawsuits against institutions they claim have allowed a trans person to use the “wrong” bathroom. Under the law, citizens submit their claims to the Texas attorney general for investigation. Any institution judged to have broken the law pays a $25,000 judgment for a first violation and $125,000 for subsequent violations.
“SB 8 will encourage ‘gender policing’ by bad actors who seek to harass or harm transgender people – or anyone who may not conform to stereotypical gender roles in public spaces,” ACLU of Texas policy strategist Ash Hall said in a statement after the vote. “This law puts anyone at risk who doesn’t seem masculine or feminine enough to a random stranger.”
Rep. Angelia Orr, who carried SB 8 in the House, said the bill is necessary to protect women and girls from assault by trans women in public bathrooms. But Democrats argued, as they have since the first Bathroom Bill was proposed in 2017, that Republicans can cite no cases of trans people ever harassing or assaulting anyone in a public restroom in Texas. On the contrary, they said, it is trans people who suffer harassment, assault, and murder at higher rates than the general public. Rep. Jolanda Jones noted that a disproportionately high number of trans citizens who are murdered are Black. “Unfortunately, with the passage of this law, we’re going to see that number increase,” Rep. Lauren Ashley Simmons said.
Republicans defeated all 13 of the amendments Democrats proposed to the bill. One, from Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez, would have struck provisions that forbid any trial court in the state, even the Texas Supreme Court, from declaring the law unconstitutional or issuing an injunction to block its enforcement.
Democrats said the provisions are blatantly unconstitutional. “[SB 8] outlaws disagreement by design,” Garcia Hernandez said. “If the state can pass a law today and no one can challenge it in court, if it can ban injunctions and silence judges, if it can punish lawyers for representing people whose rights are affected, then what can’t it do? Today, it’s about bathrooms. Tomorrow, it can be about speech or religion or voting.”
“Today, it’s about bathrooms. Tomorrow, it can be about speech or religion or voting.” – Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez
As the vote neared, Republican Rep. Wes Virdell urged members to support SB 8, saying he would do so because he cares about his future granddaughter being safe in public restrooms. San Marcos Rep. Erin Zwiener asked Virdell how he thought that future child would feel about the law if they were trans.
“She won’t be,” Virdell said.
“How do you know that?” Zwiener asked.
“Because it depends how you raise them a lot of times.”
“Have you spoken to any trans youth or their families?” Zwiener asked moments later. Virdell said he had not. Zwiener asked why. “Because where I’m from, we don’t let that happen very often,” Virdell answered. LGBTQ advocates screamed down from the gallery in protest. Speaker Dustin Burrows ordered them removed. The members voted.
Gooch said afterward that he and his colleagues are exhausted. “Given that we have been fighting the most anti-LGBTQ bills in any state legislature, at any point in history, I would say the community is very defiant, but at the same time overwhelmed,” he said. “Fighting for eight years, I think there’s a lot of fatigue and exasperation.” Gooch, a survivor of conversion therapy and attempted suicide, emphasized that trans people who feel suicidal should contact the Trevor Project at www.thetrevorproject.org.
After dispensing with the Bathroom Bill, the Republicans passed House Bill 7, another bill with a bounty hunter enforcement mechanism, on a vote of 82-48. HB 7 will allow any citizen, anywhere in the world, to sue manufacturers and distributors of abortion pills like mifepristone for intending to violate Texas’ abortion ban, even if no abortion took place. The bill does not allow the women themselves to be sued but a woman’s friends or family or doctor can be, if they help her obtain the medication. Plaintiffs who win in court will be awarded $100,000.
Democrats accused Republicans during debate of once again pushing a bill that rigs the court system against ordinary people. “I’m not a lawyer, but it doesn’t take a lawyer to see when the Constitution is being put through a paper shredder,” Rep. Donna Howard said. “The purpose of this bill is not to protect women. This bill is about giving Jonathan Mitchell [the right-wing attorney who designed Texas’ original bounty hunter law, the 2021 Heartbeat Bill] and his cronies a $100,000 slush fund to pay for their legal assault on our rights.”
Rep. Vincent Perez connected the dots on SB 8 and HB 7, saying both create a private bounty system that encourages right-wing Texans to spy on their neighbors and help them profit from the culture war. He described the bills as an emerging form of Republican governance designed to control people. He said HB 7 gives anti-abortion advocates more time to seek claims in civil court than rape survivors who are impregnated by their attacker.
“Here’s the ugliness,” Perez said. “In cases of rape, a perpetrator’s family can profit from that crime and from [the victim’s] trauma, as if the woman who was violated has no standing in her own life. The rapist’s relatives can walk into a courtroom and collect a check for $100,000. In addition, this bill gives those family members six years to do it – six years to drag her doctor, her counselor, or her friend into court. But under current Texas law, if a woman is raped, she only has five years to sue her attacker. Think about that. This bill gives more time to enforce control over her body than she has to hold her rapist accountable. That is the cruelty and insanity of Republicanism in 2025.”
This article appears in The 35th Annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival.
