Texas City Puts Bounty on Trans People Who Violate New Bathroom Law
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Amid a flurry of anti-LGBTQ laws implemented in 2024, one small city took it a step further: incentivizing citizens to report people using a restroom that doesn’t correspond with their biological sex in a city-run building.
In Odessa, Texas, there’s a $10,000 bounty on people who violate this law, which opponents believe will disproportionately impact transgender people. Individuals who “catch” a transgender person using a restroom that doesn’t align with their gender at birth have the right to sue for no less than $10,000 in damages.
The law specifies that “biological sex” is decided by the person’s original birth certificate, meaning trans people with updated certificates are also subject to the law.
There’s an exception for children under the age of 12 entering opposite-sex restrooms with their parents. But Pride Center West Texas founder Bryan Wilson said anti-LGBTQ lawmakers didn’t think through how that would hurt families and residents.
“[The bill] completely discounts single parents, or a grandmother who's raising her grandson … once that child turns [12], which is still a child, he can't cry out for his grandmother without her doing something illegal,” Wilson said.
-Clinton Engelberger
