The US Capitol Building at dusk, in Washington, DC, USA, 06 November 2024. EPA-EFE/GRAEME SLOANThe issue became a flashpoint after Republican Representative Nancy Mace filed a resolution to impose that requirement, which targeted US Representative-elect Sarah McBride.
“Women deserve women’s only spaces," Johnson said in a statement. He said members could use bathrooms in their private offices, which can be a 10-minute walk from the House floor where voting and debate take place, or unisex bathrooms in the Capitol.
McBride, a 34-year-old Delaware lawmaker-elect, said she would comply with Johnson's order but called it a distraction from more substantive issues.
"I'm not here to fight about bathrooms. I'm here to fight for all Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families," she said in a statement.
Other Democrats have said the effort to exclude transgender people from single-sex bathrooms amounts to bullying.
McBride focused her successful election campaign on economic issues, including protections for unions and affordable healthcare and childcare.
Transgender rights have become a political rallying cry for right-wing politicians in the US Lawmakers in 37 states introduced at least 142 bills to restrict gender-affirming healthcare for transgender and gender-expansive people in 2023, Reuters reported, nearly three times as many as the previous year.
(Reporting by Moira Warburton, additional reporting by Andy Sullivan and Rami Ayyub; Editing by Scott Malone, Bill Berkrot and Jonathan Oatis)
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