Speaker Johnson restricts use of Capitol bathrooms by transgender people

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said Wednesday that transgender individuals would not be allowed into restroom facilities in the Capitol and House office buildings that do not correspond with their sex assigned at birth, announcing the rule change about two weeks after Democrat Sarah McBride of Delaware became the first openly transgender individual elected to Congress.

“All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings – such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms – are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” Johnson said in a statement. “It is important to note that each Member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol. Women deserve women’s only spaces.”

This week, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced a resolution to ban transgender women from female bathrooms in the Capitol. The resolution does not specifically name McBride, but Mace said Tuesday that “it’s 100 percent because of McBride” and that the future congresswoman “doesn’t get a say” in shaping the first-of-its-kind policy.

In a statement Wednesday, McBride said she is “not here to fight about bathrooms.”

“I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families,” McBride said. “Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson even if I disagree with them. This effort to distract from the real issues facing this country hasn’t distracted me over the last several days, as I’ve remained hard at work preparing to represent the greatest state in the union come January.”

At a news conference Tuesday, Johnson refused to say whether he thinks McBride is a woman or a man. But hours later, he told reporters: “Let me be unequivocally clear: A man is a man, and a woman is a woman, and a man cannot become a woman. … But I also believe that we treat everybody with dignity, and so we can do and believe all those things at the same time.”

Johnson told reporters Wednesday that “like all House policies,” the bathroom rule is “enforceable.”

“It’s always been, I guess, an unwritten policy but now it’s in writing,” he added.

When the Washington Post contacted the speaker’s office Wednesday for more details on how the new rule would be enforced, it declined to elaborate.

Asked by reporters Tuesday for details on how the House could enforce such a restriction, Mace said the House sergeant at arms “can enforce it.”

Mace thanked Johnson for the rule change, writing on X on Wednesday: “This fight isn’t over just yet. We want to ban men from women’s spaces in EVERY federal building, school, public bathroom, everywhere.” The post was one of hundreds the congresswoman has made on social media about the bathroom issue in recent days.

Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign – an LBGTQ advocacy group where McBride was previously a spokesperson – called Johnson’s new bathroom rule “cruel and discriminatory.”

Robinson pointed out that the rule “targets not just Rep.-elect McBride, but all trans and nonbinary people who work and visit the Capitol – public servants who have been working in the Capitol for years.”

House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.) told reporters Tuesday, after Mace introduced the resolution, that it wasn’t a “great start” for the new Republican House majority to kick off the 119th Congress by talking about “where one member out of 435” is going to use the bathroom.

“The American people say: Mind your own business about where people do their business,” Clark said.

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Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.