A series of "bathroom bills" aimed at restricting transgender individuals' access to bathrooms in public places and schools have failed to pass in the Texas legislature's special session, which ended on Tuesday night.



The special session was called by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott with the aim of passing bills including property tax reform legislation and the bathroom bill — a version of which passed in the Senate early in the session last month.

The Senate version of the bill, which had the strong support of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other far-right Republicans, would have forced transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond with the gender marker on their birth certificates.

But influential House Speaker Joe Straus — a moderate Republican — and people in the business community objected to the proposals.



In the end, the special session ended without a vote being called on the bills, effectively killing them for now.

"The Speaker made it very clear to me personally that he opposed the privacy bill and said he would never allow it to be voted on," Abbott told KFYO radio. "There is absolutely no evidence he will ever change his mind on this issue."

Critics of the bill raised questions about how such a policy would be enforced in practice, while also labeling them as blatantly discriminatory toward transgender people.

"The issue is that these bills violate people’s rights under Title IX and the constitution, and really bar people from participating in public life," Kali Cohn, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, told BuzzFeed News.

Changing birth certificates to reflect a person's gender identity can also be complicated, Cohn said, depending on where they were born.

While it's possible to make that change in Texas, there are no specific laws that make it mandatory for courts to allow transgender people to do so, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality, and some courts are more willing to issue the orders than others.

"The practical reality of doing so can be difficult. It can also be really expensive," Cohn said.

