{"id":95104,"date":"2025-12-20T06:24:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T06:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/95104\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T06:24:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T06:24:21","slug":"texas-wants-citizens-to-take-pics-and-tattle-on-trans-people-using-the-bathroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/95104\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Wants Citizens to Take Pics and Tattle on Trans People Using the Bathroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for The Agenda<\/a>, Them\u2019s news and politics newsletter, delivered Thursdays.<\/p>\n

In his latest<\/a> anti-trans<\/a> attack<\/a>, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants to deputize citizens via an online tip line for reporting violations of the state\u2019s new law restricting bathroom access.<\/p>\n

Senate Bill 8<\/a> (SB8), also known as the \u201cTexas Women\u2019s Privacy Act<\/a>,\u201d 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\u2019s \u201cbiological sex\u201d assigned at birth. Institutions found in violation of the law are subject to up to $125,000 in fines.<\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s tipline, officially known as the Texas Women\u2019s Privacy Act Complaint Form<\/a>, encourages Texans to report alleged violations of the law directly to the attorney general\u2019s 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 \u201cevidence\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI encourage anyone who believes a state agency or political subdivision has violated SB 8 to submit a complaint via the form on my website,\u201d Paxton said in a December 17 press release<\/a> announcing the tipline, which referred to trans women as \u201cmentally ill men.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether, we will uproot and bring justice to any state agency or political subdivision that opens the door for men to violate women\u2019s privacy, dignity, and safety,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

As the Dallas Observer<\/a> pointed out, it\u2019s actually a felony to record people\u2019s bathroom usage. The Invasive Visual Recording section of Texas\u2019 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\u2019 phone was confiscated by Texas\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

As previous incidents \u2014 like a Minnesota Buffalo Wild Wings worker allegedly demanding that a cisgender teenager \u201cprove\u201d her gender<\/a> by showing her chest in an on-sight bathroom \u2014 have shown, this sort of deputization is often ineffective and can lead to harassment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for The Agenda, Them\u2019s news and politics newsletter, delivered Thursdays. In his latest anti-trans attack, Texas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[223,24544,27,29,28,19756],"class_list":["post-95104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-news","tag-splitscreenimagerightfullbleed","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}