North Carolina recently caused a national firestorm when the state legislature passed a law requiring bathrooms to be gender-segregated, to prevent people from using facilities that don’t correspond to their biological sex.
In the wake of the decision, fivethirtyeight.com inquired which other states had proposed similar laws. They found that seven other states are considering such legislation, including Kansas. However, the details can differ among the laws. One thing the laws tend to agree on is requiring that public school bathrooms, in particular, be separated by sex. But there seems to be some disagreement about how to define gender. The most popular method is what a person’s gender is decided to be at birth. But some laws use other methods, including chromosomes, anatomical sex, and sex listed on the birth certificate. Fivethirtyeight got its numbers from the National Center for Transgender Equality, an advocacy organization. The other states with proposed bathroom laws are Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee and Wisconsin.