UNITED STATES – NOVEMBER 19: Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., talks with reporters before a meeting of the House Republican Conference in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, November 19, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace is waging a bathroom battle on Capitol Hill and has “doubled down” on her anti-transgender stance by proposing new bathroom-focused legislation.
Mace, a Republican, said in a post on X, “Oh you thought threatening me would silence me? No. I just doubled down and filed a new bill to protect women and girls across the entire country on all federal property everywhere.”
The bill, branded, the “Protecting Women’s Private Spaces Act,” would prohibit people from using single-sex bathrooms, locker rooms, or changing rooms on federal property “other than those corresponding to their biological sex.” It defines “federal property” as any building or land owned by an agency of the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense and the U.S. Postal Service, and would apply to places such as national parks and museums.
Further, property owned by the municipal government of Washington, D.C., and the governments of U.S. territories also fall under the bill’s definition federal property.
If signed into law, the measure would have the effect of blocking transgender men and women from using restrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
Mace’s legislation coincided with Transgender Day of Remembrance, which has been recognized annually on Nov. 20 since 1999 and honors transgender people killed by violence.
Mace filed her bill following a separate resolution aimed at blocking transgender members of Congress and staffers from using gender conforming restrooms in the Capitol. Mace has explicitly stated that the move was targeted at incoming Delaware Rep. Sarah McBride, who will be sworn into Congress in January.
McBride, the first openly transgender member of Congress, was also the first openly transgender person to serve as a state senator when she was elected in Delaware in 2020, the first to speak at a U.S. national political party convention in 2016, and the first to intern at the White House in 2012.
Mace’s proposal was followed up by a statement by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said he supported plans to ban transgender women from using women’s bathrooms on Capitol Hill. Johnson also noted that every member office in the Capitol has a private restroom and that unisex bathrooms are available throughout the building.
McBride, a Democrat, has weighed in only insofar as to say in a statement that she was “not here to fight about bathrooms,” and warn that the entire issue is a Republican-created technique to distract from real issues.
In a statement Wednesday, Mace slammed the, “woke mob” for its “predictable performative outrage from the radical Left” and boasted:
The radical Left says I’m a ‘threat.’ You better believe it. And I will shamelessly call you out for putting women and girls in harm’s way. Women fought for these spaces, and I will not let them be erased to score political points with a small but loud activist class.
Mace continued, calling her proposal “common sense” and vowing to protect women and girls from “straight up weird policies.”
Despite conservative talking points, studies have shown that laws that protect individuals’ right to use bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms that conform with gender identity have not affected the frequency of criminal incidents in those spaces, and that transgender individuals are frequently the victims of harassment in public restrooms.
Mace’s proposed legislation has not yet been assigned to a committee for debate.
In 2014, Gavin Grimm won a landmark victory for transgender rights when the U.S. Supreme Court left a lower court ruling in place that said federal law protects transgender students from being forced to use separate restroom facilities.
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