More than a dozen people were arrested Thursday for protesting Republicans’ push to ban transgender women from using women’s bathrooms in the House.
WikiLeaks whistleblower and activist Chelsea Manning was among those arrested, according to organizers with Gender Liberation Movement, the group that planned the action.
The activists gathered outside of Speaker Mike Johnson’s personal office in the Cannon Building around noon, demonstrating both in the corridor and the women’s restroom across the hall.
“Speaker Johnson, Nancy Mace, our bodies are no debate,” the group chanted. They held signs that read, “Flush Bathroom Bigotry” and “Congress Stop Pissing on Our Rights!”
Capitol Police briefly blocked access to the fifth floor hallway, as well as a strip of New Jersey Avenue on the west side of Cannon, as they arrested protesters and moved them into paddy wagons. Those arrested were facing charges of “Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding — for illegally protesting inside the Cannon House Office Building,” according to a Capitol Police spokesperson.
South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace made bathroom access an issue in November, after Sarah McBride won election in Delaware. The Democrat is set to become the first openly transgender member of Congress.
Mace mounted a furious campaign to block her incoming colleague from using women’s bathrooms in the Capitol. “I am a survivor of sexual abuse. I can tell you right now, I am never going to allow a biological man in any women’s private spaces,” she told reporters in mid-November.
Johnson soon weighed in, announcing that “all single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” though he did not explain how he plans to enforce the policy or check bathroom users’ sex assigned at birth.
Democrats have described Mace’s effort as bullying and transphobic. And McBride, the Delaware Democrat, called it an attempt to distract from more important issues.
“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them,” McBride said in a Nov. 20 statement. She later told CBS News that she’d never planned on using multi-stall restrooms at the Capitol.
Mace also introduced a bill that aims to block transgender people from using single-sex restrooms across all federal buildings.
The Gender Liberation Movement on Thursday criticized Democrats for not pushing back more forcefully against those efforts.
“In the 2024 election, trans folks were left to fend for ourselves after nearly $200 million of attack ads were disseminated across the United States. Now, as Republican politicians try to remove us from public life, Democratic leaders are silent as hell,” said co-founder Raquel Willis in a statement released to the press. “But we can’t transform bigotry and hate with inaction. We must confront it head on.”
Manning, the former Army soldier who leaked hundreds of thousands of documents related to America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is a polarizing figure. She was convicted of violating the Espionage Act in 2013, but her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama in 2017.
Manning came out as a transgender woman in 2013.
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