House narrowly passes bill allowing all-gender bathrooms
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[March 24, 2023]
By PETER HANCOCK
Capitol News Illinois
phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois House narrowly passed a bill Thursday that
would allow businesses, universities and other building owners to
designate multi-occupancy all-gender bathrooms if they choose to do so.
The bill passed on a vote of 60-40, the bare minimum number of “yes”
votes needed for passage in the 118-member House, after the presiding
officer held the roll open for several seconds waiting for the 60th vote
to be recorded.
State Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville, who sponsored the bill, said
the language of House Bill 1286 is identical to an earlier bill that
passed 63-43 in the House in 2021 but was never taken up in the Senate.
Illinois law already allows for single-occupancy bathrooms to be
designated for all genders, but Stuart’s bill would allow an all-gender
designation for bathrooms that accommodate two or more people.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Mar/24/images/ads/current/merealty_sda_BASKETBALL_2022.png)
The bill sets out standards that all-gender bathrooms would have to
meet, such as “inclusive signage” that does not indicate any specific
gender; stall dividers with functioning locks controlled by the user;
and partitions for each urinal, if urinals are present.
In addition, if such bathrooms are part of a newly constructed building
or a building undergoing major renovation, they would have to comply
with requirements of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and the
Illinois Accessibility Code. Each toilet stall would have to include a
small trash receptacle, and it would have to have at least one vending
machine for menstruation supplies and one baby diaper changing station.
The bill also provides that any multi-occupancy restroom could be
converted to an all-gender restroom. But if another single-gender
multi-occupancy restroom is located adjacent to or near the all-gender
restroom, both would have to be designated as all-gender facilities.
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![](../images/032423PIX/news_b3.jpg)
Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville,
speaks in favor of a bill on the House floor Thursday that would
allow multi-occupancy all-gender bathrooms in Illinois. (Credit:
Blueroomstream.com)
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2017/Jul/22/images/ads/current/rohlfs_lda_072017.png)
The bill passed out of the House Human Services Committee on Feb. 22 on
a 6-3 vote after only brief discussion. But just a few days later,
Stuart said she was forced to cancel a planned constituent coffee event
in Collinsville, “due to violent threats and malicious information being
spread by special interest groups about bathroom privacy and safety
legislation.”
“Yeah, there was some, I think, deliberately incendiary information
being touted, real falsities about what was in the bill that was leading
to, you know, frankly, threats and things that I didn't want to expose
my staff and the public to,” Stuart said during an interview Thursday.
“So we chose to cancel a public event.”
She said when the 2021 bill passed, there was more debate about it on
the floor of the House than there was Thursday, but she did not receive
the kinds of personal attacks and threats over it that she received this
year.
“I think it's just the general mood,” she said. “Unfortunately, we've
gotten to kind of a real ugly place in our politics where people stoke
division and fear and hate for political gain. And they're not ashamed
to lie in the process.”
She stressed that the bill does not mandate that any bathroom be
designated for all genders, but only allows building owners to do so if
they choose.
The bill was just one of hundreds of bills the House has voted on this
week as it nears a Friday deadline for most bills to pass out of the
House and be sent to the Senate. The Senate has a similar deadline to
send its bills to the House by next Friday, March 30.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news
service covering state government. It is distributed to more than 400
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is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R.
McCormick Foundation. |