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U.S. Capitol
Nancy Mace’s proposal to cut bathroom access for trans women in the Capitol is the latest in the building’s long history of excluding women lawmakers.
Originally published by The 19th
The first woman entered Congress in 1917. It would take 45 years for the seat of legislative power in the United States to give women their own bathroom. Now, bathroom access for women on the Hill could be restricted yet again — but not because of men.
South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican who in 2021 stated that she supported transgender equality, has introduced a bill that would ban transgender women from accessing women’s restrooms and facilities in the U.S. Capitol.
Mace has singled out the newly elected congresswoman Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat and the first out trans person elected to Congress, when discussing the bill. Mace’s proposal would leave bathroom policing to the House sergeant-at-arms. House Speaker Mike Johnson has signaled support for the bill.
“Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully,” McBride wrote on X on Monday. “I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness.”
Related: Republicans are trying to ban transgender Congresswoman-elect Sarah McBride from using the women's bathroom
The architecture of the U.S. Capitol has long catered exclusively to men. The first women’s gym, before the facility was made co-ed, was inferior to the men’s gym with smaller and worse equipment. Women didn’t have locker rooms.
The early bathrooms for women were small and windowless, with not enough stalls, and when they were installed there was no thought given to the possibility that more women would eventually walk the halls of power.
It would take 75 years for congresswomen to have any restrooms adjacent to the Senate floor. And in 2011, nearly a century after Jeannette Rankin became the first woman in Congress, women lawmakers got their first bathroom near the House chamber.
In recent years, women lawmakers have had to use the private quarters of the Speaker of the House just to find a restroom that reliably stocks tampons and pads. Banning trans women from women’s restrooms would continue a long history at the U.S. Capitol of women lawmakers being forced to find alternate ways to simply do their job.
