Texas’s S.B. 8: Unconscionable and Unconstitutional

September 17, 2025

Texas’s cruel anti-trans bathroom ban is nearly law. In late August, the House amended and then approved Senate Bill 8 in an 86-45 vote. Then, the Texas Senate approved the amended version, so S.B. 8 will soon land on Governor Greg Abbott’s desk. Abbott, who has a lengthy and horrific record of trampling trans rights, is expected to sign the bill.

If S.B. 8 is enacted, the consequences would be dire. The bill, as currently written, would restrict bathrooms and changing rooms in government buildings, prisons, jails, and schools based on a person’s sex assigned at birth. Notably, there’s no exception for trans incarcerated people to be housed consistently with the gender, which is particularly heartbreaking because of the immense danger involved. If a government facility is found in violation of the ban, the fines are astronomical: $25,000 for the first instance, and $125,000 for the second.

S.B. 8 is a blatant attack on our human rights, putting trans people – as well as anyone who reads as not “masculine” or “feminine” enough to a random observer – at serious risk. Gender presentation, not solely gender identity, will play a role. Surely, some trans people who pass will not be harassed in bathrooms and changing rooms. And some cis people will be targeted under S.B. 8, simply because they appear non-conforming or unconventional. As reported by the Human Rights Campaign, this year alone, police were called on a cis woman in an Arizona Walmart restroom, a pair of cis women were harassed by security and guests in a Boston hotel restroom and ultimately forced to leave, and a Minnesota cis teenager “was accosted by a server at a local restaurant, where she claims she was forced to ‘prove’ her gender by exposing herself.”

In the words of Ash Hall from the ACLU of Texas, the passage of S.B. 8 is both “unconscionable and unconstitutional.” We at the Woodhull Freedom Foundation wholeheartedly join in Hall’s comments. The multitude of anti-trans bathroom bans across the U.S. violates our fundamental human rights.