Lawmakers are trying to squeeze more discriminatory amendments into the state's $218 billion budget.

Texas Lawmakers Couldn’t Wait For Bathroom Bill To Pass, So They Introduced New Anti-Trans Measures

With SB6 stalled in the Texas legislature, two Republican lawmakers have introduced a pair of new anti-trans amendments to the House budget.

The measures come from freshman representatives Valoree Swanson (R-Spring) and Briscoe Cain (R-Deer Park), and are among more than 400 proposed additions to the legislature’s $218 billion two-year budget.

Swanson’s proposal would prohibit agencies backed by the state from using funds to construct, renovate or reclassify bathrooms, showers or locker rooms “to allow or enable a man to enter a women’s restroom facility or a woman to enter a man’s restroom facility.”

While her measure differs from the proposed bathroom bill in that it doesn’t attempt to define what a “man” or “woman” is, nor does it make mention of birth certificates, it’s still policing when and how people can use the restroom.

Briscoe Cain

Cain’s amendment, meanwhile, prevents the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from providing trans inmates with “any surgery related to sex reassignment or gender transitioning.” While the department currently provides hormone therapy to some transgender prisoners, it prohibits gender-affirming surgery, which it doesn’t consider to be medically necessary.

Earlier this year, Rep. Cain landed in hot water for calling violence against trans women to nothing more than “dudes walking around in dresses getting beat up.”

Equality Texas condemned the amendments, writing in an email that proponents of SB 6 “have made it clear this session that they intend to insert discriminatory language that directly targets transgender Texans into anything they can get their hands on, including the budget process.”