Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signs law restricting bathroom use by trans, nonbinary, intersex people

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott just signed legislation restricting transgender people from using many public restrooms matching their gender identities.

In a video posted on social media when signing the bill, SB 8, he said, “This is just common sense.”

That makes Texas the 20^th state to put a law on the books restricting the use of toilet facilities by transgender people.

Related: Texas Democrats fleeing the state also stopped anti-abortion and anti-trans bills

The legislation imposes a $25,000 fine on any government institution, including schools, universities, shelters, prisons, and local government buildings, that violates the policy of segregating bathrooms by gender. That jumps to a $125,000 penalty on a second offense and subsequent violations. The bill does not impact privately owned businesses.

It also recognizes only the sex assigned at birth for the toilet-users, and only recognizes as female or male those with reproductive systems producing eggs or sperm, respectively. That means the bill impacts transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Texans.

LGBTQ+ advocacy groups in Texas criticized the signing of the bill, saying it will further stigmatize already marginalized communities in the Lone Star State.

“This is a painful moment for our community. Despite the overwhelming majority of Texans raising their voices against this legislation during the regular and special sessions, today SB 8 was signed into law,” read a statement from Equality Texas.

Democrats in the Texas Legislature delayed the passage of the bathroom bill in August when they fled the state, a move primarily motivated by the attempt to stop the redistricting of Texas’s congressional boundaries.

But Republicans passed both the map and the anti-transgender legislation earlier this month.

Abbott’s prioritization of the bathroom restrictions marks a shift in policy for the Texas leader. In 2018, said he was not going to prioritize the passage of a bathroom bill. That was after a version of legislation has died in the legislative process before ever reaching his desk, but he said the matter was “not on my agenda” while campaigning for re-election that year.

But he declined to say at the time whether he would sign a bill if it landed on his desk, and he has long been known for an anti-LGBTQ record since taking office in 2015.