The Injustice of Bathroom Bills

Abstract Bathroom bills are laws or policies that require trans people to use bathrooms for the gender they were assigned at birth rather than the gender that matches their gender identity. Florida, Kansas, and Texas currently have bathroom bills in place, the UK in all likelihood will soon have such a bill in place. And many other US states have limited bathroom bills in place. Existing philosophical work on bathroom bills by gender-critical feminists Lawford-Smith and Stock has argued that bathroom bills are just or right. This paper argues that bathroom bills breach trans people’s rights, and these rights are not outweighed by other rights or other considerations, so bathroom bills are unjust. First, it argues that bathroom bills violate trans people’s rights to public, civic, or social participation without harm. It then argues that even idealized bathroom bills, very different from those that have been proposed, enacted, and argued for, that require all public spaces to have a plentiful supply of gender-neutral bathrooms designed for trans people to use, would breach trans people’s rights against unjust statistical discrimination. Finally, the paper addresses Lawford-Smith’s and Stock’s arguments in detail. It establishes that these arguments fail to show that bathroom bills are just.