It looks like the transphobic tirade of Rep. Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, was all for naught, as her proposed bathroom ban was excluded from Republicans’ House Rules package.
Following Mike Johnson’s reconfirmation as House Speaker, Congress voted Friday on the proposed rules, which included a provision to make it more difficult to oust a speaker and teed up an anti-trans GOP bill that would require the sex of athletes to be recognized “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
The absence of Mace’s bathroom ban might come as a surprise to the media-obsessed congresswoman, who told Huffington Post in November that Johnson assured her it would be included.
Shortly after Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride was elected the first openly transgender person to serve in Congress, Mace became a walking billboard for transphobic ideology—a departure from her once “pro-transgender” stance.
Mace’s two-page bathroom ban proposal claimed that allowing “biological men into women’s spaces” would “jeopardize the safety and dignity” of other women.
She further doubled down on her transphobic stance, telling reporters in November that she was “absolutely” targeting McBride ahead of her being sworn in to Congress.
“Yes, and absolutely. And then some,” she said. “I’m not going to stand for a man, you know, someone with a penis, in the women’s locker room.”
Johnson originally stood behind Mace’s incessant attacks against McBride, issuing a statement that he was in favor of segregation in federal buildings.
“All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings—such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms—are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” he wrote.
It’s unclear if Republicans are backing away from bathroom bans or if they consider Johnson’s statement to be a good enough rule on its own.
At the time of the proposed ban, McBride gracefully pushed back against the hatred, writing on X that it was a “blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing.”
“We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care,” she wrote, “not manufacturing culture wars.”
