LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An Arkansas bathroom bill was revamped Tuesday following complaints from members of the transgender community and their families it would criminalize trans people simply for using public restrooms.
The House Judiciary Committee endorsed the proposal to allow someone to be charged with misdemeanor sexual indecency with a child if they use a public restroom or changing room of the opposite sex when a minor is present. The majority-GOP panel advanced the measure after it was amended to make it a crime only if the person enters the restroom “for the purpose of arousing or gratifying a sexual desire.” The proposal now heads to the full House for a vote as early as Wednesday.
The Republican lawmaker behind the bill said he was OK with the latest version, saying his intent wasn’t to target transgender people with the bathroom restriction.
Republican Sen. John Payton said after the vote, “I think this new language in the bill probably helps guide it more directly toward what we’re trying to accomplish, and that’s bad actors that are in there for sexual gratification to misbehave.”
The change followed hours of testimony from members of the trans community, family members and other opponents who said the restriction would further marginalize and threaten transgender people who have been targeted by several bills in this year’s session.
Evelyn Rios Stafford, a member of Washington County’s quorum court and a transgender woman, told the committee during the hearing, “This bill is such an overreach that it would have an individual whose legal documentation and physical anatomy matches the sign on the door be barred from entering the restroom.”
The panel heard from transgender people worried about the potential confrontations they could face if they complied with the law.
The original version of the bill went further than a bathroom law North Carolina enacted in 2016 and repealed a year later following widespread boycotts and protests. That law did not include any criminal penalties.
The committee’s vote comes a week after Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation prohibiting transgender people at public schools from using the restroom that aligns with their gender identity. The law, which takes effect later this summer, makes Arkansas the fourth state to enact such a restriction.
Proposals to restrict transgender people using the restroom of their choice have seen a resurgence this year, six years after North Carolina repealed its bathroom law. More than two dozen bathroom bills have been filed in 17 states this year.
Opponents of the original version of the bill said the new version addresses many of their concerns that the prohibition would be used to prosecute transgender people for using restrooms that match their gender identity.
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