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In his latest anti-trans attack, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants to deputize citizens via an online tip line for reporting violations of the state’s new law restricting bathroom access.
Senate Bill 8 (SB8), also known as the “Texas Women’s Privacy Act,” went into effect on December 4. The law restricts bathrooms and changing rooms in government-owned or government-operated buildings, schools, shelters, and prisons based on a person’s “biological sex” assigned at birth. Institutions found in violation of the law are subject to up to $125,000 in fines.
Paxton’s tipline, officially known as the Texas Women’s Privacy Act Complaint Form, encourages Texans to report alleged violations of the law directly to the attorney general’s office. The form requires users to provide their full names, address, phone number, and email, and to indicate their willingness to testify in court and/or sign an affidavit. In addition to including the exact date and location of an alleged violation, users must also submit “evidence” in the form of a gif, jpeg, png, pdf, doc, or docx file. In other words, Paxton wants you to photograph people using public restrooms.
“I encourage anyone who believes a state agency or political subdivision has violated SB 8 to submit a complaint via the form on my website,” Paxton said in a December 17 press release announcing the tipline, which referred to trans women as “mentally ill men.”
“Together, we will uproot and bring justice to any state agency or political subdivision that opens the door for men to violate women’s privacy, dignity, and safety,” he continued.
As the Dallas Observer pointed out, it’s actually a felony to record people’s bathroom usage. The Invasive Visual Recording section of Texas’ Penal Code prohibits any photography or video recordings of clothed or naked intimate areas in a state bathroom. The crime of doing so is punishable by up to a year in jail. In 2023, Williamson County GOP Chair Michelle Evans’ phone was confiscated by Texas’ Department of Public Safety and she faced a district attorney investigation after she shared a photo of a trans woman inside a Texas Capitol restroom.
As previous incidents — like a Minnesota Buffalo Wild Wings worker allegedly demanding that a cisgender teenager “prove” her gender by showing her chest in an on-sight bathroom — have shown, this sort of deputization is often ineffective and can lead to harassment.