Next Steps

What the HRC can do NOW to end bathroom discrimination against transgender people:

1. Require that all single person bathrooms must be gender neutral.

*Requires no new construction.

*No legal reason for single stall bathrooms to be sex segregated.

*Making single stall bathrooms gender neutral does not bring up concerns of safety or privacy.

*Many places already do this, including most people’s homes.

How?

*Add language to the gender identity compliance guidelines that makes this a requirement.

*Distribute to places of business.

2. Recruit businesses and organizations to voluntarily convert one multi-stall gendered bathroom into a gender neutral bathroom leaving at least one men’s room and one women’s room available.

*Requires no new construction.

*Voluntary compliance.

*No legal reason available to challenge this type of arrangement.

*Allows people to get comfortable with the idea of gender neutral multi-stall.

*Has been very successful at YWCA in Boston and the LGBT Center in NYC.

*Can do a pilot study around these bathrooms to collect data in support of future steps.

*Begins to really address the discrimination that many transgender people experience in the bathroom.

How?

*With the help of the HRC, form a community task force to implement this voluntary conversion program, data collection, and development of future steps.

Future steps for ending transgender bathroom discrimination:

There are a lot of different possible solutions to ending bathroom discrimination against transgender people. Below are some ideas for the community task force to consider:

1. Require that if there are more than two multiple person bathrooms, that any after the first two be gender neutral – i.e. 1 female, 1 male, rest gender neutral

2. Require that if an establishment has multiple floors, alternating floors be gender neutral and gender segregated

3. Require that if there is more than one multiple person bathroom, that 1 be female, and the rest be gender neutral

4. Require that for each female and male bathroom, there must be a gender neutral bathroom

5. Require that all bathrooms must be gender neutral.