A Texas city infamous for placing a $10,000 bounty on trans people who use bathrooms and locker rooms that do not align with their sex assigned at birth has voted to make its policy even more strict.
On Tuesday, the Odessa City Council voted 5-1 to maintain its bathroom ban and allow individual citizens (whether or not they are Odessa or even Texas residents) to sue a trans person for a minimum of $10,000 in damages if they violate it (there is no cap on how large the bounty can be). It also approved an expansion of the law. Once applied only to public facilities, it will now apply to private ones as well.
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“You are putting a target on the queer community’s back by offering a reward and taking money out of their pockets,” Odessa resident and business owner Bradley Burke told the council during public comments, as reported by Lonestar Live.
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“The trans community is not a threat to Odessa or anyone in the bathroom,” added Matilda Mann-Morales, president of local LGBTQ+ group Out in West Texas. “We’re just trying to live out our lives. I don’t want the government in the bathroom.”
Speakers also argued that trans people have not historically posed any risk to people in the bathroom and are instead statistically far more at risk of being abused or harassed while trying to use facilities. Lonestar Live reported that Odessa police have not received any report about public restrooms in three years, and police in several states have said they have been unable to identify any cases of trans people harassing anyone in a public bathroom.
A letter from the ACLU of Texas to the Odessa City Council and Mayor Javier Joven, pointed out that the last-minute addition of private facilities in the legislation is a likely violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act because the city did not “provide adequate notice to business owners and Odessa residents that the local government was exposing them to immense liability on private property.”
The letter also pointed out that “the proposal to place a bounty of $10,000 per occurrence on anyone using a restroom on private property could bankrupt many businesses and Odessa residents, as well as flood the courts with frivolous lawsuits.”
The organization also urged the city council to reject the ordinance because it is discriminatory and does not “reflect the values” of Odessa: “Transgender people are part of the fabric of our community, our families, our workplaces, and our neighborhoods. Like everyone else, they are small business owners and homeowners and should be allowed to use their private property without undue government interference. But the sweeping proposed changes affixed to your upcoming council agenda trample on their rights and threaten to create a gender-policing witch hunt on both public and private property across the City.”
In addition to granting the right to sue, the ordinance also invokes criminal penalties for individuals who use bathrooms that align with their gender identity. The provision states that a “person violating the provisions of this ordinance shall be deemed guilty of a Class C misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine not to exceed five hundred dollars” and that anyone who refuses to use a bathroom aligned with what the city perceives as their biological sex, even after being asked to leave by a building owner, may be guilty of misdemeanor trespassing.
The bounty defines biological sex based on birth certificates, either at the time of birth or corrected if there was a clerical error. This means that any transgender individual who gets their birth certificate updated to reflect their gender identity would still be violating the law if they used bathrooms that align with their gender.
This ban lacks any exceptions for disabled people who may be accompanied by a person of a different gender and may open the door to lawsuits targeting anyone who is gender non-conforming.
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