Two anti-trans bill die in Mississippi legislature due to Republican fumble

Two transphobic bills in the Mississippi have died after Republican lawmakers were unable to compromise on their provisions before a Monday deadline, the Associated Press reported. One bill would have forced trans people to use facilities in public buildings that match the gender listed on their birth certificates, and the other would have established that “there are only two sexes… male or female” and that one’s sex is defined at birth.

The Republicans in the state House and Senate had previously passed different versions of both bills, but they couldn’t agree to a single version of each one to pass to Gov. Tate Reeves (R). Reeves had previously signed laws banning trans athletes from playing on competitive sports teams matching their gender identities and banning trans minors from accessing gender-affirming healthcare.

Related: Mississippi inmates may get to sue prisons if they’re jailed with trans people

State House lawmakers advanced the so-called “Dignity and Safety for Incarcerated Women Act.”

State Rep. Joey Hood (R) said the now-dead bills were necessary “to make sure boys go to boys’ bathrooms, girls go to girls’ bathrooms.” The bathroom bill would have allowed people to sue any trans person who used a bathroom or changing area that matched their gender identity, though the bill had exceptions for children under 12, emergency medical workers, cleaning workers, janitors, and people who need assistance, the AP reported.

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State Rep. Zakiya Summers (D), who is Black, compared the bathroom bill to discriminatory bills during the Jim Crow era that limited which bathrooms Black people could use.

“It reminded me of what my ancestors had to deal with at a time when they couldn’t go in the bathroom, either, and they wouldn’t dare stick their toe in a pool,” Summers said.

The second now-dead bill, entitled the “Mississippi Women’s Bill of Rights,” would have defined gendered terms like “woman,” “man,” “mother,” “father,” “female,” “male,” and “sex” by the sex assigned by doctors at the moment of one’s birth. The law would have impeded trans people from changing the gender listed on their government-issued documents.

When Reeves signed the ban on gender-affirming care into law in March, he was joined at the signing ceremony by anti-trans filmmaker and Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh, as well as activists from Alliance Defending Freedom and Madison County Moms for Liberty, two anti-LGBTQ+ organizations.

A statement released by The Spectrum Center, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization in Hattiesburg, called Reeves’s signing of the bill “an act of violence,” adding, “He and the lawmakers who pushed this bill in Mississippi are willfully ignoring the unique needs of transgender young people, interfering with their medical care and sending a stigmatizing, exclusionary message.”

Gender-affirming care has been endorsed by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, and many other professional medical organizations as safe, effective, and essential for the well-being of trans people. Studies have shown that gender-affirming care improves the mental health of trans youth.

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