Elizabeth Nolan Brown on Gender-Neutral Restroom Roadblocks

Public restrooms have not always been gender
segregated. Historically, shared restrooms have been a feature of
most communities, and this is still true in many countries today.
In 1887, Massachusetts became the first state to pass a law
requiring separate women’s restrooms in the workplace. By the
1920s, most U.S. states had followed suit.

The problem, Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes, is that governments
went beyond merely requiring all employees have a place to do their
business and started specifying exactly how and in what ratios this
must occur, in and out of the workplace. These days, America’s
public restrooms are regulated through state and municipal building
codes that dictate exactly how many bathrooms buildings,
businesses, and other public entities must provide, based on
occupancy capacity. These codes also require the existence
of separate men’s and women’s bathroom facilities. For advocates of
unisex bathrooms, building codes—not bigotry—may be the biggest
obstacle. 

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