Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) walks to a Republican members conference meeting at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023 as House lawmakers seek to elect a new speaker in Washington.
The House of Representatives convenes today and new members of the House – including out Reps.-elect Julie Johnson (D-TX), Sarah McBride (D-DE), and Emily Randall (D-WA) – will be sworn in.
The House will also have to pass a new set of rules that will govern how the House works over the next two years, and them noticed that one much-discussed rule from 2024 is not in the resolution: Rep. Nancy Mace’s (R-SC) ban on trans women using the appropriate restrooms at the Capitol complex.
Related:
Shortly after the 2024 elections and after it became clear that McBride would be the first out trans member of Congress, Mace introduced a resolution to ban trans people from using the facilities associated with their genders at the Capitol complex. Trans people have been working at the Capitol and visiting it for decades without incident and McBride will get her own private bathroom in her office, so Mace’s rule would mainly have the effect of making it harder for trans staffers to work at the Capitol and for trans people to participate in democracy.
Insights for the LGBTQ+ community
Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced in November that restroom usage would be determined by “biological sex,” but he didn’t provide any more details about his policy, how it would be enforced, or how “biological sex” would be defined.
Mace said in November that Johnson told her that her anti-trans language would be included in the rules resolution.
“I talked to him multiple times yesterday, but he assured me it would be in the House rules package,” she told the HuffPost at the time.
The rules resolution does contain one reference to LGBTQ+ people. In the section on fast-tracked legislation that the House will vote on without any chance to modify them is a bill to ban trans kids, nationwide, from participating in school sports. Most of the other pieces of legislation listed in this section are related to immigration.
Republicans have an even narrower majority in the House this session. The GOP won 220 seats in the 2024 elections, but former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has already resigned from the House and won’t claim his seat. There were 215 Democrats who won seats in the House in the 2024 elections.
This could set up a contentious fight today over who will be the speaker. Republicans over the past several years have shown that they have a difficult time coming to a consensus on their House leadership, and it would take only two Republicans voting against Johnson to derail his speakership, since all Democrats are expected to vote against Johnson.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
