After almost a decade of failed attempts, the Texas House has approved Senate Bill 8, known as the “bathroom bill,” which would restrict usage of public restrooms for members of the state’s transgender community.
SB 8, also called the Texas Women’s Privacy Act, would limit usage of public restrooms at government buildings and public schools to those corresponding with a person’s gender at birth.
“The preference of someone’s sexual appearance does not override the safety and privacy of a biological female,” said Angelia Orr, R-Itasca, the bill’s House sponsor.
If passed by both chambers and signed into law, SB 8 will be the most financially punitive bathroom bill in the country, thanks to a last minute amendment from Rep. Steve Toth, R-Conroe, who increased the fines to $25,000 for institutions at which such violations occur and $125,000 for any subsequent violations.
The amendment was added without debate, the Texas Tribune reports.
The bill doesn’t create fines for individuals, and it doesn’t affect private institutions or businesses.
Texas has been trying, and failing, to pass a bathroom bill since 2017. This is the farthest any of these attempts have gotten in the Republican-controlled legislature.
SB 8 has one more vote in the House before it heads to the Senate, where it’s likely to pass. Various iterations of the bathroom bill have passed the Senate six times since it was first proposed in 2017.
As debate heated up on the House floor, activists and members of the public were removed from the chambers as they screamed expletives at the chamber’s GOP majority. Several members of the legislative body got into shouting matches and had to be separated by staff members.
“We judge a society by how it treats those at the margins, and we judge people with power by the choices they make with that power,” Brad Pritchett, interim CEO of Equality Texas, said in an emailed statement. “This bill continues a crusade designed to exclude transgender Texans from participation in public life — but ultimately it will fail. Transgender Texans have always been here and always will be.”
On the House floor, Texas Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, raised concerns about the age cut-off built into the bill, which would require him to bring his young daughter into the men’s public bathroom instead of accompanying her into a stall in the women’s restroom — even if it’s empty.
“I don’t know if people need an education as to what a men’s restroom is like in public places, but it’s certainly not the kind of place you’d want to take a little girl,” Bernal said.
State Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, called the bill a “perversion and an abomination,” adding that even women who use the men’s restroom when the line for the women’s restroom is long would be in violation.
Other critics said the bill would encourage harassment, emboldening people and institutions to police gender based on sight alone.
Ash Hall, policy and advocacy strategist for LGBTQ+ rights at ACLU of Texas, stated that it’s not just trans Texans who will feel the harms of this bill but anyone who doesn’t adhere to expected gender presentation.
“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,” Hall said. “This law puts anyone at risk who doesn’t seem masculine or feminine enough to a random stranger, including the cisgender girls and women this bill purports to protect.”
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This article appears in Aug 21 – Sep 2, 2025.
