Rep. Nancy Mace says Capitol restroom bill targeted at 1st transgender member of Congress

[no_hypocrisy]

37. Couple of things:

*IF* the bill were to be enacted before January 20, Biden would veto it.

*IF* the bill were to be enacted post-January 20 and Trump signed it, the new statute would be susceptible to legal challenges:

A) Bill of Attainder.
A bill of attainder is a piece of legislation that declares a party is guilty of a crime. Bills of attainder allow the government to punish a party for a perceived crime without first going through the trial process.

In the United States, bills of attainder are unconstitutional as stated in Article 1 Section 9 and Article 1 Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution. Article 9 prohibits federal bills of attainder and Article 10 prohibits bills of attainder by the states. The constitutional ban on bills of attainder works to uphold separation of powers principles by preventing Congress from assuming the functions of the judicial branch.

Courts have adopted a three-part test to determine if a law functions as a bill of attainder:
The law inflicts punishment.
The law targets specific named or identifiable individuals or groups.
Those individuals or groups would otherwise have judicial protections.

In Nixon v. Adm'r of General Services, the court determined that punishment for the purposes of bills of attainder will determined by considering:
Whether the statute would historically be viewed as punitive.
Whether the statute, viewed in terms of burdens and severity, can reasonably be said to further non-punitive purposes.
Was that a congressional intent for the statute to further punitive goals.

This bill by Nancy Mace is designed to marginalize and persecute Sarah McBride and nobody else as there are no other transgendered members of the House presently or prospectively.

or

B) The Equal Protection Clause in the Fifth Amendment of the Federal Constitution.

Equal Protection refers to the idea that a governmental body may not deny people equal protection of its governing laws. The governing body state must treat an individual in the same manner as others in similar conditions and circumstances.

Permissible Discrimination
It is important to acknowledge that a government is allowed to discriminate against individuals, as long as the discrimination satisfies the equal protection analysis outlined below, and described in full detail in this Santa Clara Law Review article.

U.S. Constitution
The Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause requires the United States government to practice equal protection. The Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause requires states to practice equal protection.

Equal protection forces a state to govern impartially—not draw distinctions between individuals solely on differences that are irrelevant to a legitimate governmental objective. Thus, the equal protection clause is crucial to the protection of civil rights.

Equal Protection Analysis
When an individual believes that either the federal government or a state government has violated their guaranteed equal rights, that individual is able to bring a lawsuit against that governmental body for relief.

Based on the type of discrimination alleged, the individual will first need to prove that the governing body actually discriminated against the individual. The individual will need to prove that the governing body's action resulted in actual harm to them. After proving this, the court will typically scrutinize the governmental action in one of several three ways to determine whether the governmental body's action is permissible: these three methods are referred to as strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, and rational basis scrutiny. The court will determine which scrutiny the individual will be subject to, relying on legal precedent to determine which level of scrutiny to use. It is important to note that courts have combined elements of two of the three tests to create an ad hoc test.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/equal_protection#:~:text=Overview,in%20similar%20conditions%20and%20circumstances.