Texas bill transgender people

By Aarón Torres
The Dallas Morning News

(The Dallas Morning News) — A measure prohibiting transgender people from using public bathrooms and similar private spaces that align with their gender identity is headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk after the Texas Senate on Wednesday agreed to a small change made to the bill by the House.

Senators voted 18-8 to approve the change Wednesday in a vote split along party lines.

Senate Bill 8, by Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, would prohibit government entities such as cities, counties, school districts and universities from adopting policies that would allow transgender people to use private facilities of the gender they identify as. The bill also extends to facilities in state agencies and state correctional facilities.

When they passed the bill last week, House lawmakers quintupled the fines the bill would impose on municipalities, state agencies and universities for violating the law. The version going to Abbott’s desk will hit violators with a $25,000 for their first violation and a $125,000 fine for future violations. Individual Texans would not be fined under the bill.

Middleton was not against the changes the House added.

“I think it’s important to have strong penalties when there is defiance in the face of what is state law,” Middleton said. “It needs to be enforced and followed.”

With SB 8, known as the bathroom ban, reaching Abbott’s desk, it accomplishes a goal long-sought by ultraconservative Republicans and grassroots organizations. When the Legislature tried to pass a similar bill in 2017, it died in the Texas House after former speaker Joe Straus, a moderate Republican, refused to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

The speaker this session is Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, and he is more conservative than Straus. And the backlash from businesses that existed in 2017 has so far not materialized in 2025.

The arguments for the bill were largely the same. Middleton and GOP lawmakers who supported the bill said it’s needed to protect women and girls in bathrooms and similar private spaces.

Democrats, however, countered the bill will discriminate against transgender Texans, individuals who are gender non-conforming and people who are born intersex. Democrats also pointed out that there had not been a documented case of a transgender person charged or found to have assaulted someone in a bathroom or other private area since the bathroom ban was debated in 2017.

The Dallas Morning News has also not been able to independently find similar cases.

Many questions remain over how the bill would be enforced, as it does not lay out any instructions for law enforcement agencies in Texas. The bill empowers Texas residents to file a complaint with the Texas attorney general’s office to investigate the agency or municipality. The measure does not create a new state crime or affect private businesses or entities.