A Texas Senate [official website] committee on Wednesday approved legislation [SB 6 text] that would limit access to public restrooms to those corresponding to a person’s gender as marked on their birth certificate. The bill, promoted as advocating for women’s privacy, would deny the majority of public restroom accommodations to transgender citizens in the state. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick [official website] and others in support of the bill have explained that their preference is to keep potential sexual predators [BI report] at bay. Hundreds of people attended [Reuters report] the committee session, lasting nearly 21 hours. Opponents of the bill have decried it as promoting discrimination.

Texas’s SB 6 is not the first piece of US legislation restricting transgender access to restrooms. Earlier this week the US Supreme Court vacated [JURIST report] a lower court ruling in a case concerning transgender restroom policies following a move by the Trump administration to rescind guidelines that school districts should allow students to use the bathroom of their choice. Also in March 11 states, led by Texas, filed a document in federal court to withdraw [JURIST report] a lawsuit against the US government, a week after a “Dear Colleague letter” from the Department of Justice overturned Obama-era guidance regarding bathroom use by transgender students. In February North Carolina lawmakers filed a bipartisan bill aimed at breaking the impasse [JURIST report] over the state’s so-called “bathroom bill” (HB2) that requires transgender people to use public bathrooms that correspond to the sex listed on their birth certificate.