Men are now barred from using women’s public restrooms in Mississippi, the state’s governor announced Monday.
Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced on social media he signed the SAFER Act into law on Monday morning. The law prohibits people in Mississippi from entering restrooms and other sex-exclusive areas in public buildings that do not align with their biological sex, according to the legislative text.
“Today is a win for girls and women across our state, and I was proud to sign SB2753 into law,” Reeves said. “You have my word that as long as I’m governor, our state will do everything in its power to keep Mississippi’s daughters safe.”
Individuals who enter a bathroom or other sex-exclusive area that does not align with their sex and refuse to leave will be charged with misdemeanor trespassing, according to the law.
The law requires all public buildings that maintain a restroom, including colleges and universities, to either have male and female-specific facilities or a single-occupancy unisex facility.
The legislation defines a woman as “a human female who is not a minor” and female as “an individual who has, had, will have through the course of normal development, or would have had, but for a developmental anomaly, genetic anomaly, disease, or injury, the reproductive system that at some point produces ova.”
There are some exceptions to the law, according to its text.
Parents, for instance, can chaperone their children of the opposite gender into restrooms under the legislation. Disabled and otherwise vulnerable people can also be helped into restrooms by people of the opposite sex.
“There’s no doubt that the left will continue to come up with more kooky ideas that harm biological women,” Reeves said. “And there’s no doubt that Mississippi will continue to push back on them. That’s because we have to—protecting girls and women from the left’s dangerous agenda is just too important to ignore.”
Reeves previously signed legislation banning biological men from competing on female sports teams and prohibiting “gender-affirming care” for children in his state.
“Gender-affirming care” is a term used to describe the use of hormone suppression and hormone treatments that can lead to chemical castration, as well as surgeries like mastectomy, phalloplasty and vaginoplasty.
Mississippi isn’t the only state to bar people from bathrooms that do not align with their sex. States like Utah, Florida, North Dakota and Tennessee, among others, have passed comparable bathroom bans.
When North Carolina attempted to pass a similar bill in 2016, the state faced considerable backlash, The Associated Press reported. North Carolina lost roughly $3.8 billion in business as a result of the bill, according to an AP analysis.
