Rep. Nancy Mace’s Bathroom Ban Left Out of GOP’s House Rules

GOP’s House rules package unveiled this week did not include Rep. Nancy Mace’s controversial transgender bathroom, less than two months after Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly assured Mace that it would be included. Mace’s plans of banning transgender women, namely Representative-elect Sarah McBride, from sharing a bathroom with her on Capitol Hill are foiled for now. Shortly after the 2024 elections, and after it became clear that McBride would be the first out trans member of Congress, Mace introduced legislation on November 18 that would restrict access to all “single-sex facilit(ies) on Federal property” based on “biological sex” alone. On November 20, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson released a statement asserting that “all single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings (…) are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.” South Carolina Rep. Mace’s transphobia only intensified after that, namely when she used a bullhorn to read Miranda rights to sit-in protesters while referring to them with anti-transgender slurs. Warning: the video below contains transphobic slurs.

Here’s what @RepNancyMace was using her bullhorn for … reading the Miranda warning for the protesters who showed up to the Capitol today to protest her bathroom bill I’m told there is now a demonstration outside Mace’s office as well pic.twitter.com/Hn67i7Bg5o — Cami Mondeaux (@cami_mondeaux) December 5, 2024

Unfortunately for Mace, the proposed rules package, which the incoming 119th Congress voted on last Friday, contains no mention of restricting government facilities by assigned sex. One section does include amending Title IX to officially restrict school athletics based on assigned sex, but the bathroom ban proposals are nowhere to be seen in the House rules proposal. It’s not clear whether Johnson has backed away from the rule or whether his statement will be taken as a de facto law of the land in the Capitol. McBride, the first openly-transgender member of Congress, has not commented on the ban’s omission in the GOP’s house rules package. Back in November, she refused to go toe-to-toe with Mace on the matter, instead asserting that she would follow whatever the House rules were. “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms,” she writes in a statement. “I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families.”