Universal Design All-Gender Restrooms

As of November 2023, the Map Movement Projectopens in new window reported seven states that banned transgender people from using restrooms and facilities consistent with their gender identity in K-12 schools. One additional state, North Dakota, extended the ban to some government-owned buildings, and one more state, Florida, extended the ban to colleges and government buildings. Such laws have documented negative impact on the mental health of transgender people (Horne, S. G., McGinley, M., Yel, N., & Maroney, M. R., 2022).

All-gender public restrooms can be used by anyone. In the U.S., all-gender restroom ordinances require a city, state, or municipality to designate single-stall public restrooms as all-gender. These public restrooms are commonly referred as “gender-inclusive,” “gender-neutral,” “mixed-sex,” or “unisex.” In addition to benefiting the transgender community, these laws can also benefit others, including people with disabilities, older adults, and parents of small children (American Psychological Association, 2019).

Gender-segregated restrooms can be unsafe and inaccessible to transgender people, since transgender people risk physical and verbal victimization in whichever gender-segregated restroom they enter (National Center for Transgender Equality, 2015). Those who oppose all-gender restrooms often cite concern that transgender people will attack or sexually harass cisgender people—particularly that transgender girls and women will victimize cisgender girls and women (Sanders & Striker, 2016). Since there is a much greater incidence of cisgender people attacking transgender people in bathrooms, the supposed controversy regarding all-gender restrooms has been labeled by activists and academics as a moral panic (Sanders & Striker, 2016).

• Many transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming people report being “gender-policed” (Detloff, 2006; Payne & Smith, 2016) when using public bathrooms with gender designated signage. Gender-inclusive bathrooms make it safer for them to use public restrooms (Chaney & Sanchez, 2017).
• According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, which had 27,715 respondents, transgender individuals reported incidents of verbal harassment (12% of respondents), physical assault (1%), or sexual assault (1%) when accessing a restroom, while 9% of survey respondents reported that they were denied access to a restroom in the past year (National Center for Transgender Equality, 2015).
• Gender-inclusive restrooms are also helpful for people whose family member—such as a child, person with a disability, or older adult—requires assistance from parents or caregivers of a different sex or gender (American Psychological Association, 2019).
• Single-use restrooms are crucial to people with paruresis (“shy bladder syndrome”) or parcopresis (“shy bowel syndrome”) who cannot comfortably use multi-stall restrooms (Knowles, & Skues, 2016). Gender-neutral signage also reduces long wait lines commonly associated with female-designated restrooms.
• For these reasons and many others, we are asking you to oppose (bathroom use bans) / support or co-sponsor (bills to establish universal design bathrooms). Please contact us if you have any questions, and we look forward to working with your office on this.