Wyoming lawmakers double down on ‘protecting female spaces’ with bills to police gender in bathrooms, sports

While Worland Republican Rep. Martha Lawley was door-knocking this fall, she said, she heard one constituent concern over all others, even more than property tax. 

“I would often hear, ‘You must get boys out of girl’s sports and boys out of the girls restrooms,’” Lawley said, adding that the focus was not to disadvantage any group, but rather to preserve women-only spaces. That motivated her to draft and sponsor a bill to police college sports eligibility and another to restrict use of public school bathrooms based on sex assigned at birth.

Her bills were among three such measures Wyoming lawmakers advanced Friday. Under the bills, transgender students would be prohibited from using the bathroom or locker room that aligns with their gender in school, and transgender girls would be barred from K-12 and college sports. 

If constituent interest in passing the bills is high, so too is interest in quashing measures opponents labeled as harmful, difficult to enforce and mean-spirited.

Lawley’s bills include House Bill 60, “Student eligibility in sports-amendments” and House Bill 72, “Protecting women’s privacy in public spaces act.” Powell Republican Sen. Dan Laursen sponsored the third bill, Senate File 62, “Restrooms in publicly funded schools-2.”

The House Education Committee unanimously advanced Lawley’s two bills, while the Senate Education Committee voted 4-1 to advance Laursen’s. The bills now head to their respective chamber floor.

The measures drew considerable public testimony from speakers ranging from athletes to superintendents and advocacy groups. Much of the tension was between two competing lines of thought: keeping women safe in single-sex spaces like locker rooms versus upholding the dignity and acceptance of transgender people. 

Opponents warned of unintended consequences, safety risks, further harm to vulnerable communities and legal liability.  

“I’m not sure how this aligns with limited or small government, or limiting government overreach,” Elliott Hinkle, a transgender person from Casper, said about one of the bathroom bills. “This creates potential liability for schools and lawsuits over privacy violations, and costly litigation.”

Supporters, meanwhile, argued that the bills erect necessary protections for female athletes and give school districts direction when it comes to setting contentious policy over bathrooms and locker rooms.

“There are many ways that we can honor the achievements and the rights of our transgender students, but this is not the place when we are talking about sports or bathrooms,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder said. 

School rules 

Laursen’s measure, Senate File 62, would require public schools to designate each multiple-occupancy restroom or changing room as either male or female, with students using the one that aligns with their sex assigned at birth. It also requires school districts to provide accommodation, such as a one-person restroom, to any person who does not wish to use a multiple occupancy facility. 

If a school district doesn’t comply, the bill would strip its accreditation. 

Park County School District 1 Superintendent Jay Curtis is the person who asked Sen. Laursen to bring the bill. He made the request, he told the committee, so the state could establish some signposts for districts to follow as issues like bathroom use are growing. 

His district does have the authority to pass its own policy, Curtis said. But, he said, “having the authority and having the blessing of your school district attorney are two very separate things,” particularly as case law is mixed right now. 

In his 15 years as a superintendent, Curtis said, the bathroom matter is “one of the very few issues that I’ve had 150 people show up to a board meeting over.” The Park County board passed a resolution saying it will support state legislation to provide clarity to school districts, which is what Curtis is hoping for.

Curtis added that he does not believe schools should lose accreditation if they are deemed noncompliant. Several others agreed that is an undue penalty.  

Lawmakers heard other concerns: how the rule would be enforced, exceptions for situations such as when opposite-sex coaches need to talk to their team, taking away local control from districts and the message the bill sends to the people of Wyoming. 

“I think we have gone a little bit sideways about what Wyoming values really are,” said Sophia Gomelsky of Laramie, who asked the panel to vote no. “Love thy neighbor and mind thy business.” 

Wyoming Equality Executive Director Sarah Burlingame suggested that schools should be able to consider every situation individually based on what makes sense for the person and situation in question. 

Ultimately, the committee amended the bill to include exceptions for people like coaches or parents of toddlers. It also struck the accreditation penalty language.

Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, was the lone no vote when it came to advancing the bill. Despite valid concerns behind the bill, Rothfuss said, “legislation like this does more damage to our transgender students and community throughout the state than it provides support or protection for anyone else.

“These types of bills, to me, seem very mean-spirited,” Rothfuss continued, “and I’m disappointed that we spend so much time worrying about top-down solutions related to bathrooms, to isolate one particular group of people when we’ve heard the solution is just working with each individual on an individual basis, which you can do from a school-district level.”

Sports in the state

In the House Education Committee, meanwhile, members considered the two bills Lawley sponsored. 

The first, House Bill 60, takes athletic eligibility rules already existing for middle and high school sports in Wyoming and applies them to students as young as kindergarten and up through college. Those rules stipulate that a student of the male sex shall not compete in a sport or team designated for students of the female sex. The bill would also prohibit female teams from competing against others with transgender players. 

“For the reasons of fairness, equity and safety, we must protect women’s sports,” Lawley said, noting that the original bill, passed in 2023, has gone unchallenged in court. A recent incident involving the University of Wyoming girl’s volleyball team, which forfeited games against a team with a transgender athlete, only makes it timelier, she said. 

House Bill 72, meanwhile, includes similar language to the Senate measure, but with a broader focus than just school settings. It limits people from entering a single-sex room or space unless they are a biological member of that sex and applies to public schools, colleges, state buildings and correctional facilities. 

“Here’s the bottom line for me, that that right to privacy should not be threatened by or trumped by someone else’s view about gender,” Lawley said. “And that’s really kind of what the bill seeks to do, is to arbitrate that and say this is going to be the priority: privacy and safety.”

Those measures also drew a lot of testimony, with advocates lauding the protection of female athletes that they say most Americans support, and opponents calling them out for being harmful to the mental and physical health of transgender people and for the fuzzy legal area around enforcement. 

“We stand in opposition to both of these bills because we think they do a significant amount of harm,” Burlingame of Wyoming Equality said. 

Nyoka Erikson, an Laramie athlete who has played hockey and roller derby, said she thinks it’s “inappropriate for the state to tell sporting organizations what their policy should be.” The roller derby league she belongs to allows transgender women, she said. 

“And that’s a decision that the member teams, the member leagues of the organization got to make for themselves,” she said. 

Dr. Rich Guggenheim, director of legislation for the group Gays Against Groomers, spoke in support of both measures. The Southern Poverty Law Center labels the organization as an anti-trans group.

“We believe public spaces, like schools, should maintain the binary bathroom model to reduce possible harm to minors and provide separate stalls for safety,” he said. 

The committee unanimously approved both bills after Lawley said she plans to suggest amendments to address some of the nuances.