“Public opinion in the United States has grown more conservative regarding restroom access for transgender individuals over the past several years, a shift the researchers link to changing beliefs about safety and discrimination. When people hold conflicting views about the rights and risks involved in this debate, they are now much more likely to side with restrictive policies than they were in the past. These shifts are detailed in a new study published [online: 24 Apr 2026] in Politics, Groups, and Identities.”

“Public restrooms have historically served as a political battleground regarding gender, space, and safety. As the study notes, the modern sex-segregated restroom emerged during the Industrial Revolution as women entered the paid workforce. At the time, separate facilities were framed as necessary safe spaces for women. Similar arguments about restroom safety appeared during the mid-twentieth century to police the behavior of gay men, and again in the 1970s by opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment.”

“The research team utilized data from two nationally representative online surveys. The first survey polled 1,291 adults in 2016, a year when national media coverage of bathroom legislation peaked. The second survey polled 1,618 adults in 2022, a period when media attention on this specific issue had cooled but conservative political focus on transgender policies remained high.”

“The researchers found that overall support for restrictive bathroom policies grew between the two survey periods. In 2016, about 54 percent of respondents supported laws restricting restroom access based on state identification. By 2022, support for these restrictions had risen to roughly 62 percent.”

“Because people do not always hold perfectly aligned political views, the research team looked closely at respondents who agreed with conflicting statements. A substantial portion of participants believed both that open restroom policies pose a security risk to women and that restrictive policies discriminate against transgender people. The way these conflicted individuals resolved their internal tension changed dramatically over the six-year gap.

“In 2016, conflicted respondents were highly likely to resolve their ambivalence in favor of transgender rights. A person who held both beliefs had about a 62 percent chance of opposing restrictive bathroom policies. They appeared to discount their own security concerns and elevate their concerns about discrimination when deciding on a final policy stance.

“By 2022, this pattern flipped entirely. Conflicted respondents became much more likely to support restrictive bathroom laws. A person holding those same competing beliefs in 2022 had only about a 29 percent chance of opposing bathroom restrictions. They began weighing the perceived security risks much more heavily than their concerns about discrimination.”

“If you ask Sonja Shaw why she’s running for state superintendent of public instruction, she’ll say she wants to refocus schools on the basics. Enough of the division, enough of the culture wars, she says — it’s time to get politics out of the classroom.”

“But for someone who wants to focus on the basics, Shaw — who was elected to the Chino Valley school board in 2022 — has generated plenty of headlines for implementing divisive policies, particularly ones that affect the LGBTQ community.

“Under her leadership as its president, the board has fought a yearslong battle with the state over its policy of involuntarily outing transgender kids to their parents and expelled current Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond from a board meeting after he criticized that policy while it was still under discussion.

“The board also barred the display of gay-pride flags in the classroom, and approved a policy to quickly remove books from school bookshelves in response to parent complaints that they are sexually explicit.”

“Central to her run for superintendent against San Diego Unified School Board President Richard Barrera has been her opposition to transgender girls competing in female sports — despite the fact that the number of them doing so is vanishingly small.

“The Examiner spoke with Shaw last week about why she’s running for superintendent, what her priorities would be if she won and why she’s so focused on transgender girls in sports. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.”

First Nation Community Declares Itself Safe Haven For Trans People

“Restrooms are private spaces under state and federal law. Non-consensual recording of others in private spaces is also illegal, as is sharing such images.

“But what if such an image also had a political statement?
What if the subject is transgender?

“Those are the legal questions raised in a 2023 lawsuit brought by Michelle Evans, chair of the Williamson County Republican Party, which seeks to block Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza from enforcing Texas' invasive visual recording law against her.”

“The district court denied Evans' request for a preliminary injunction on June 30, 2023. Her legal team appealed to the 5th Circuit on July 28, which affirmed the lower court's ruling on Dec. 9, 2025.”

“Evans' attorneys petitioned the court on Dec. 23, 2025, to rehear the appeal ‘en banc,’ which means to have all of the 5th Circuit appellate judges weigh in on the case.”

“The 5th Circuit's judges considered and voted 10-7 to reject Evans' petition for a rehearing. The court's Oct. 9 filing included that result, as well as two dissenting opinions and one concurrence.”

“If SCOTUS chooses to review the case, it'll be at least another year until it might hear arguments on if Evans should be shielded from prosecution that Garza says he can't bring.”

“Avery Rowland, a transgender woman in small-town Kansas, is running as a Democratto represent a state legislative district in the bottom-right corner of the state, about two hours south of Kansas City. She wants to bring more highways, hospitals and schools to her rural, deep-red district.

“Her race was fairly uneventful, until she got wind of a Kansas Republican Party official questioning her eligibility to vote.

“Kansas Reflector, a local news outlet, came to her with records showing that the state GOP treasurer, Roger Lomshek, had called the secretary of state’s office and asked why a new law invalidating transgender Kansans’ licenses wasn’t being applied to voter registration.

“Specifically, he wanted to know why that law didn’t apply to Rowland and her ability to vote.

“‘I was a little bit pissed off,’ she told The 19th. ‘That’s kind of a chicken move to do. Just be a man, but, whatever.’

“Lomshek was asking about** **SB 244, which invalidated thousands of Kansans’ drivers licenses based on gender identity and required immediate replacement. 

“In response to Lomshek’s inquiry, state officials found that election officers are not responsible for enforcing SB244 when it comes to voting or running for office.

“‘Gender discrepancies can never be a basis for denying anyone the right to vote,’ a spokeswoman for the Kansas secretary of state office said in a statement to Reflector.”

“So far, when it comes to voting, these mismatched IDs don’t seem to be a problem. That could be a rare good sign for Kansans, who are living under the most restrictive ID law for transgender people in the country.”

“I look, sound and live as a woman – but new NHS guidance says transgender patients should be placed on hospital wards according to their birth sex rather than their gender identity. It’s as though I don’t deserve the same kindness and compassion as others, says Diana Thomas”

“An image of a transgender Green Party councillor in Britain has been edited to give her more masculine features.

“The ‌altered image, shared on X and Facebook, shows Eden Hills, councillor for Little London and Woodhouse, in the northern English city of Leeds, with facial hair.

“The original image was a screenshot taken from a video ⁠uploaded to the Leeds Green Party’s Instagram account on May 8, in which Hills delivers a speech upon being elected, as a representative for the ward. That does not show a moustache.

“Reuters analysed the altered photo with Google’s SynthID, an AI detection tool, which concluded the image was created using the tech company's generative ‌AI ⁠models. The tool works by detecting a hidden watermark contained in AI-generated or AI-modified images created by Google models.

“Hills also told Reuters in a phone call on October ⁠14 that the image is not genuine.

“Hills was elected as councillor for the Green Party on May 7 with 2,617 ⁠votes, more than half of the votes cast among six candidates, according to Leeds City Council.”