Laramie woman defies Wyoming’s anti-trans bathroom ban
The law, which is meant to ban trans women from accessing female restrooms, took effect Tuesday. Ríhanna Kelver was neither arrested nor stopped from using a women’s restroom in the state capitol.
Shortly after noon Tuesday, Ríhanna Kelver stepped into a restroom at the Wyoming State Capitol, just feet away from a Wyoming Highway Patrol officer stationed outside the governor’s office.
Kelver, a trans woman from Laramie, chose the women’s bathroom as she had thousands of times before. But Tuesday — July 1 — was the first day she did so under a legal regime that explicitly forbids her from using the restroom consistent with her gender identity.
“I think we’re getting to a point where action needs to start being more direct,” Kelver told the Laramie Reporter last month as she planned to stage the protest in Cheyenne. “I think we need to get creative with our direct action in ways that are reminiscent of the direct actions we’ve seen before through history. And I think this is a pretty simple, and creative, direct action to either A. force litigation that could help us dismantle this policy, or B. at least force the message that the policy is kind of worthless.”
Kelver was neither arrested nor asked to leave by any officials or members of law enforcement. But it’s not clear that she should have been.
The law restricts transgender individuals to the restrooms consistent with the sex they were assigned at birth. But it’s not enforced with genital checkers or guards as bathroom stalls. Instead, as written, the law allows private individuals who encounter a trans person in a government facility’s restroom to sue the agency maintaining that facility.
Therefore, the onus is on private individuals to take offense and assert that offense in a lawsuit, and on government agencies to appropriately designate their male and female restrooms.
It’s not clear if anyone will report Kelver. The only other individuals to enter the women’s restroom with her Tuesday were a supporter and a female journalist.
But present outside the restroom, alongside more supporters and male journalists, was Jessie Rubino, a lobbyist for the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. The WYFC is the right-wing faction of House Republicans that sponsored, championed and passed the bathroom bill Kelver chose to defy.
The Freedom Caucus’ official X account posted about the planned protest just minutes before it began, calling Kelver “a dude” and asking Gov. Mark Gordon to “enforce the law.”
“Today the WYFC learned of a planned act of so-called ‘civil disobedience’ at the Wyoming Capitol building. A self-identified ‘trans woman,’ otherwise known as a male, has announced his plans to violate Wyoming law, effective today, protecting women’s spaces, by using the women’s restroom,” the post states. “It’s time to show women — real women — what it means to be the Equality State. As [Powell] Representative Paul Hoeft [HD-25] eloquently stated earlier this year, ‘cowboys don’t use the cowgirl’s outhouse.’”
Kelver was not stopped from entering or using the restroom and was not stopped from leaving the capitol grounds.
Before the action in the capitol, she addressed reporters outside.
“I do not inherently believe in the state’s interpretation of my own identity,” she said. “Nor will I willfully be silent in the enforcement of where and how I can exist in public as who I am.”
Despite the rhetoric surrounding transgender use of female restrooms, there is no evidence that trans women pose a threat to the safety of women and girls when they are allowed into female spaces. In fact, the opposite is true: trans-inclusive policies enhance public safety.
Kelver told reporters she, as a trans woman, feels safer using the women’s restroom. Trans individuals are significantly more likely to be the victims of violence than their cisgender neighbors.
She addressed reporters again following her uneventful visit to the restroom.
“This is exactly what should just be happening,” she said. “This law shouldn’t even be there. I should have just been able to walk in and out like that. But that being said, if the state wants to continue to move forward with trying to say where I can be and how I can be, then they are, to their own level, going to have to put their money where their mouth is. If not, I’m going to continue to be who I am, where I’m at, and I’m going to continue to fight things like this law.”
You go Girl! I love you, Rhi 💕