PHOENIX — The issue of who gets to use what bathroom is not new to Arizona.
In 2013, then-Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, introduced legislation to make it a crime to enter a public restroom designated for one gender or the other if someone is “not legally classified” on a birth certificate as a member of that sex. His measure also would have applied to public showers, baths, dressing rooms or locker rooms.
That move came a month after the Phoenix City Council voted to extend its anti-discrimination laws to those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.
Foes quickly dubbed it the “bathroom bill,” saying the provisions about public accommodations could result in businesses being prosecuted for refusing to let transgender men use the women’s room.
Kavanagh said state action was needed. Otherwise, he said, any man who simply “thinks of himself” as a woman could be free to go into a women’s locker room and disrobe.
“That’s unacceptable behavior,” he said.
When that proposal proved politically unacceptable, Kavanagh tried a new approach, scrapping the criminal penalty and instead saying that store owners have the right to decide what type of restroom customers can use without fear of being sued.
Kavanagh said a business owner would make that decision “the same way they’ve always done it,” by challenging the person going in. He said that preserved protections for those who may be concerned who else is sharing a restroom.
“We don’t want to have young girls in women’s locker rooms being exposed to basically biological men in a state of undress,” Kavanagh said.
But officials in Tucson, which has had an ordinance similar to the Phoenix one since 1999, said no one had ever raised an issue or filed a complaint about who was using which bathroom.
Kavanagh eventually dropped the proposal, saying he could not get the necessary votes.
