AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Senate has passed Senate Bill 3, a bill that would bar transgender or gender non-conforming Texans from access to restrooms and students from participating in athletics in accordance with their gender identity. SB 3 also prevents political subdivisions from the adoption or enforcement of pro-LGBTQ discrimination protections already in federal or state law. The bill is the first legislative step in Gov. Greg Abbott’s push for a so-called “bathroom bill” as part of his “special discrimination session” this summer, which has already started harming Texas’ economy.
“By approving SB 3, the Texas Senate has displayed outright negligence for the safety and will of their own constituents,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD. “This law is designed to make it nearly impossible for transgender and gender non-conforming people to go about their daily lives like other Texans and opens the transgender students to discrimination, bullying, and violence. Encouraging discrimination against fellow Texans serves no one, and with Texas’ largest employers opposed to SB 3, it is sure to cause a devastating economic panic.”
“As a proud member of the intersex community, 2% of the global population that does not fit in a binary ‘male’ or ‘female’ box that can be stamped on the door of a bathroom, I am deeply concerned about SB 3 and the 600,000 members of my LGBTQIA+ community that would be put into immediate danger were it to pass into law,” said Alicia Weigel, a Texan and Director of Communications at Deeds Not Words – the gender equality nonprofit established by former Texas Senator Wendy Davis. Weigel testified against SB 3 last Friday. “This bill dredges up past relics of bathroom discrimination, using misconceptions and roundly discredited scare-tactics in order to justify its harmful outcomes.”
Already this year, anti-LGBTQ activists, including Gov. Abbott, have advocated for legislation that openly targets and discriminates against transgender Texas, barring them from public accommodations in accordance with their gender identity. Not only has a so-called “bathroom bill” been opposed by the majority of Texans and big businesses across the country, but it could drain about $3 billion from the state’s economy while also putting the safety of transgender Texans in jeopardy. Even Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, a Republican, voiced his opposition to the anti-trans bills – saying he was “disgusted by all this” and did not “a suicide of a single Texan on [his] hands.”
