Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
When the U.S. House of Representatives convenes on January 3, its members will vote on a suite of new rules proposed by Republicans. But one high-profile proposal is conspicuously absent from the GOP’s day-one agenda: Rep. Nancy Mace’s much-ballyhooed Capitol Hill bathroom ban.
Mace, whose transphobia has peaked in the weeks since the 2024 election, introduced legislation on November 18 that would restrict access to all “single-sex facilit[ies] on Federal property” based on “biological sex” alone. On November 20, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson released a statement asserting that “all single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings […] are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.” Representative-elect Sarah McBride, the first trans woman to be elected to Congress, quickly agreed to follow such a rule while in office — but Johnson has not provided further details about how that policy would be defined or enforced, placing trans people who visit or work at Capitol Hill in limbo.
The proposed rules package, on which the incoming 119th Congress is scheduled to vote this Friday, contains no mention of restricting government facilities by assigned sex. One section lists legislation that would be fast-tracked to a final vote, which does include amending Title IX to officially restrict school athletics based on assigned sex, but Mace and Johnson’s bathroom ban proposals are nowhere to be seen.
It’s not clear whether Republicans consider Johnson’s November statement to be an enforceable rule in itself, or have simply backed away from the issue. Mace previously told HuffPost in November that Johnson had “assured [her] it would be in the House rules package.” (Them emailed Johnson’s office for comment but did not receive a reply at time of writing.) In December, more than a dozen activists including Raquel Willis and Chelsea Manning were arrested during a sit-in protest opposing a bathroom ban and calling on Democrats to block Mace’s legislation.
Nancy Mace, a Sitting Congresswoman, Is Openly Using Slurs Online
In recent history, Capitol Hill has had little tolerance for racial or homophobic slurs. But the self-identified “TERF” seems to get a free pass.
Even if Johnson had included a bathroom ban in his rules package, a potential Republican revolt on Friday could sink it or end Johnson’s speakership entirely. One of Johnson’s proposals would significantly heighten the requirements for a motion to vacate: If passed, such a motion would only be considered “privileged” (meaning it must be voted on immediately) if it is sponsored by nine members of the majority party. Such a rule would effectively prevent Democrats, as the current minority party, from passing a motion to vacate altogether, and would make it significantly harder for Republicans to remove Johnson than it was for them to get rid of Kevin McCarthy in 2022.
Johnson is already set to enter with the narrowest House majority since the Great Depression, and although he reportedly brokered a deal within his party to approve this rule in November, it would only require a few Republican defections to scuttle the ship — either by voting down Johnson’s rules, or removing Johnson himself. One has already emerged: GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, who says he will not vote for Johnson as Speaker when called on Friday.
“He won by being the least objectionable candidate, and he no longer possesses that title,” Massie said of Johnson in a post on X, formerly Twitter, this week. “[T]he emperor has no clothes and the entire conference knows it but few will say it.”
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