A Texas Bounty on Trans People
Big prizes! Win $10,000 and up for reporting a trans person!
Texas Lets Anyone Sue a Trans Person for $10,000+ in ‘Damages’
Odessa, Texas passed “a transgender bathroom ban authorizing a $10,000 bounty on any transgender person using a restroom,” Erin Reed reports. All they need prove is that the gender marker on our original birth certificate doesn’t match the gender designation of the bathroom.
Never mind whether we’ve got an updated version of our birth certificate. Under this city ordinance, an updated birth certificate (if any) is irrelevant.
The Odessa ordinance “creates a private right to sue transgender individuals” for being in a gender-specific bathroom. “If the challenger succeeds,” Reed says, “ the transgender individual would be required to pay the cisgender complainant ‘no less than $10,000,’ with no cap on the potential bounty.”
Other states with bathroom bans have written exceptions to ignore the gender of a person who is helping a disabled person in the bathroom, but Odessa’s ban didn’t bother with this exemption.
Yes, this resembles the anti-abortion bounties in Texas.
Reed explains:
“Odessa isn’t merely banning…
