A bill that would make Wyoming’s state and local governments liable for letting males use women’s bathrooms and changing rooms in most public facilities – and vice versa – on Wednesday cleared both chambers of the state Legislature.
House Bill 72 is now headed to Gov. Mark Gordon’s desk, after the House of Representatives voted Thursday to approve the Senate’s changes to it – a change in course after the House had voted against those changes Wednesday evening.
The “Protecting Privacy In Public Spaces Act” would let people who encounter a person of the opposite sex in a restroom or changing room in most public facilities – not including K-12 school districts and local jails – sue the governmental entity overseeing that facility.
The person would have to prove that the government didn’t take reasonable steps to prevent the incursion. Then the person could recover damages and attorney fees.
The Senate removed school districts from HB 72 because Senate File 62, a bathroom-related bill focusing only on school districts, has cleared both chambers and is headed to Gov. Mark Gordon’s desk, as well.
Woah Now
Senate Majority Floor Leader Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, vowed Wednesday to vote in favor of HB 72 because of the “fervor” surrounding it, but she criticized it as a poorly written enticement to a litigious society.
“I don’t think anybody thinks it’s OK (to have men in women’s changing rooms),” began Nethercott. Still, she added, the bill is “fundamentally the antithesis of our Wyoming values.”
That’s because, rather than letting people take action against a male who causes harm in a women’s changing room at a public facility, the bill lets people sue the government for not doing enough to stop the male, she said.
“(It signals) that the government is here to protect you; it’s the government’s responsibility to protect you wherever you go,” she said.
For example, the bill allows women who encounter men in a public-facility changing room (and vice versa) to sue the governmental entity in charge of the space if the government didn’t take reasonable steps to stop the entry. Those reasonable steps are “not limited to” posting signage, meaning there’s a broad category of steps the government could have taken, but no one knows what those are yet.
Juries will determine what those are in each lawsuit. And that will get expensive for local governments, especially since the bill promises government reimbursement of attorney fees, Nethercott warned.
“Ambulance chasers unite!” said Nethercott, in a tongue-in-cheek tone. “There is money to make.”
Nethercott said she’d prefer a bill that held bathroom wrongdoers accountable, rather than holding the government to an unclear and expensive liability standard.
“But I’m going to vote this through because there’s such strong support,” she said.
Riley Gaines
Sen. Darin Smith, R-Cheyenne, countered Nethercott’s speech by referencing Riley Gaines, a collegiate swimmer who became a women’s-rights activist after losing a swimming trophy to a transgender competitor — and having to face that competitor in the locker room.
Gaines has since wondered aloud why no one stopped the transgender athlete from entering the women’s changing room.
“She should have been protected; she had no course of action,” said Smith who, like Nethercott, is also an attorney. “My Wyoming values are to … deliver the oppressed from the hand of the oppressor.”
Smith said voting in favor of the bill is the right thing to do.
Republican Resistance
Nethercott wasn’t the only Republican senator to speak against the bill.
Sen. Ed Cooper, R-Ten Sleep, challenged the bill’s proponents on whether they’d actually read it. He theorized that most of them haven’t.
The idea is “something that absolutely has to be brought forward, but this is the wrong way to do it,” said Cooper. “We promised them good solid legislation. This is not it.”
Sen. Charlie Scott, R-Casper, echoed that thought. The bill’s oversights and unintended consequences will send its good cause into “disrepute,” said Scott. He said Wyoming must put a stop to “abuses” of bathroom sex separations, but the state must find a responsible way to do it.
Roll Call
In the final Senate vote, six senators voted against HB 72 and 25 voted in favor.
The dissenting six were Scott and Cooper, plus Democratic Sens. Chris Rothfuss (Laramie) and Mike Gierau (Jackson), and Republican Sens. Jim Anderson (Casper) and Cale Case (Lander).
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
