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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 in Politics, Groups, and Identities.
Over the last decade, lawmakers across multiple states have proposed and passed legislation regulating which public restrooms transgender people can use. These bills typically require individuals to use facilities that match the sex listed on their original birth certificates rather than their current gender 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.
Today, political rhetoric surrounding transgender bathroom policies tends to rely on three main arguments. Proponents of bathroom restrictions often argue that allowing transgender women into women’s restrooms poses a security risk to women and children. Opponents counter this by framing bathroom restrictions as a form of discrimination against transgender people. They also argue that forcing transgender individuals into facilities that do not match their outward appearance places those individuals at physical risk.
Patrick R. Miller, a political scientist at Kent State University, led a team of researchers to investigate how these three political arguments influence public opinion. The researchers wanted to understand which of these beliefs resonate most with the public. They also wanted to see how Americans formulate their policy preferences when they happen to agree with arguments from both sides of the political aisle.
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.
In both surveys, participants read three statements reflecting the main political arguments about bathroom access. They rated their level of agreement on a seven-point scale. The statements asked whether unrestricted restroom access poses a security risk to women and children, whether restroom restrictions discriminate against transgender individuals, and whether such restrictions endanger the safety of transgender people.
Participants also indicated their ultimate policy preferences. They were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement that transgender people should only be allowed to use public restrooms consistent with the sex listed on their official state identification cards.
To ensure their findings isolated the impact of specific arguments, the researchers applied a robust statistical model to the survey responses. They accounted for a wide range of demographic and psychological variables known to influence political opinions. These included age, sex, income, religious attendance, and political partisanship.
The team also measured underlying psychological traits, such as moral traditionalism, egalitarianism, and a person’s baseline sensitivity to disgust. By accounting for these broad traits, the researchers could better isolate how the three specific bathroom-related arguments independently swayed policy preferences.
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.
When examining the underlying beliefs, the researchers noticed shifting patterns. The belief that transgender restroom access poses a security risk to women and children grew stronger in the population by 2022. At the same time, the belief that bathroom restrictions discriminate against transgender individuals also grew slightly, while concerns about the physical safety of transgender people remained relatively stable.
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.
The researchers also observed changes in how education influenced attitudes among political liberals. In 2016, highly educated liberals held the most consistently pro-transgender beliefs about the bathroom issue, standing apart from less educated liberals. By 2022, this educational divide vanished, as highly educated liberals shifted toward a more neutral stance that matched the rest of their ideological cohort.
The study relies on observational survey data, which means it cannot establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship between political messaging and changing public opinion. The surveys capture snapshots in time, and the researchers note that self-reported attitudes do not entirely capture how these policies operate in reality.
Future research could rely on experimental designs to test how specific messages or news frames actively alter a person’s viewpoint. Researchers might also investigate why the argument regarding the security of women and children remains so persuasive to the public, as previous studies have not found empirical evidence of an actual security threat linked to inclusive bathroom policies.
The study, “Policing gender in the bathroom: attitudes toward the transgender bathroom issue,” was authored by Patrick R. Miller, Andrew R. Flores, Donald P. Haider-Markel, Daniel C. Lewis, and Jami K. Taylor.