KY GOP lawmaker vows to file bill to keep trans women out of women’s bathrooms
After telling a transgender woman last week not to use a women’s restroom in the Kentucky Capitol and later calling her a “pervert” on social media for doing so, a Republican lawmaker said he plans to file a bill next session keeping “men out of girls’ bathrooms.”
“I’m going to file a bill next year to protect the innocence of these little kids,” Ravenna Rep. Bill Wesley said in a phone interview Monday.
Wesley said he wants that bill to apply not just to the Kentucky Capitol but “throughout the commonwealth,” though he isn’t sure yet what that would look like.
“I’m going to make sure I’m going to file something to protect that Capitol. This should be a common-sense thing,” Wesley said. “Four years ago, you never saw that. Now all of a sudden, we’ve got to cater to these people? I shouldn’t have to cater to anybody or any group for the innocence of these little kids. No, I’m not going to do it.”
But trans leaders in Kentucky, as well as Carma Bell Marshall, the trans woman whom Wesley confronted with Capitol police officers last week outside a women’s bathroom, question: shouldn’t every Kentuckian be welcome in the “people’s house?”
“The fact of the matter is, there are trans Kentuckians who live in this state who have homes, families and friends, and that is the people’s house,” Marshall said in an interview Monday. “If they choose to show up in that space, it has to be welcoming for them, as well. They deserve that right.”
This friction between Republicans and trans Kentuckians is the latest in a string of examples over the last years initiated by the GOP, who have moved to pass laws aimed at revoking that minority population’s rights. Kentucky blocked trans middle- and high-school girls from competing in girls’ sports in 2022. In 2023, most Republicans voted to pass the hefty Senate Bill 150, an omnibus law that chiefly prohibits trans youth in Kentucky from obtaining gender-affirming health care. And this year, the GOP passed two bills that strip trans adults on Medicaid from getting gender-affirming health care.
Marshall spoke to the Herald-Leader Monday evening just before an event in Louisville celebrating Trans Day of Visibility, a nationwide effort to uplift trans and non-binary people.
Trans visibility day is normally a day of celebration. But on the heels of the Frankfort incident last week, and passage of House Bill 495, the bill blocking transgender adults on Medicaid from accessing gender-affirming health care, several of the speakers at Monday’s event said they feel worn down, unsafe, and tired of being pawns in the GOP’s ongoing “culture war.”
“Ninety-nine percent of the time, I don’t want to be visible. When I go to the grocery store, I’m not leading with the fact that I’m a trans person, because it’s not safe, “said Maddie Spalding, development director of the Louisville Youth Group, which serves LGBTQ+ youth and young adults.
“I don’t want to be a part of this culture war,” Spalding said. “I don’t want to fight grown men who pick on children. I’m visible because I have to be. And I’m really scared.”
‘Misusing’ his power
Wesley confronted Marshall outside a women’s bathroom on the first floor of the state Capitol on March 27 in a situation Wesley later described as “a grown man trying to portray as a woman, trying to get into the bathroom with these little girls.”
The second-to-last-day of session was crowded at the Capitol. Children and adults, alike, had arrived for tours and a series of rallies. Marshall was at the statehouse for a rally, hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, to speak in solidarity with LGBTQ+ allies and “celebrate and amplify our message of unity and resilience” in the face of a handful of anti-trans bills the legislature passed this session.
In the final days of session, Republicans overrode Democratic Gov. Andy Behear’s veto of House Bill 495 and Senate Bill 2, which blocks trans people who are incarcerated in Kentucky from receiving gender-affirming health care.
Marshall was at the rally to facilitate an “energetic and inclusive dance and music party,” so she showed up wearing a slim-fitted cream sequinned dress and heels. She’d gone to the bathroom before her speech to check her “lipstick and lashes” in the mirror. As she was walking out, Marshall said she saw a Capitol officer motioning at her.
As she exited the bathroom Wesley, who had called over the officers, asked what she was doing.
“Oh, I’m just getting ready for the rally,” Marshall said she told Wesley.
Wesley then asked, “Are you male?”
Marshall explained she was a trans woman and she had a right to be there.
Wesley accused her of looking for a reason to get into a restroom with girls and said, “You don’t pull that stuff here.”
Marshall said she’s been to the Capitol complex several times over the years, and during those visits, she’s used the restroom and never had a problem.
She ran for office in 2024, losing in the Democratic primary to Colleen Davis, who later lost to the GOP incumbent at the time, Rep. Susan Witten.
“There are no laws telling me I can’t be in the girl’s restroom,” Marshall said she told Wesley. But Wesley “kept pushing,” eventually saying, “You can’t use any bathroom on this property. If you need to use the bathroom, you go somewhere else,” she said.
The lawmaker posted to X after the incident, “men who try to use women’s restrooms are perverts.”
Wesley told the Herald-Leader by phone Monday that he said: ‘You’re a grown man. Why are you in here?’ I said, ‘Don’t you ever use this women’s bathroom, again.’ I told him that, and I’ll tell any other man that. My thing is the innocence of them children and the respect of them mothers and grandmothers. They shouldn’t have to deal with that.”
The confrontation and its fallout are a boon for Wesley among many in his party. In recent years he has positioned himself at the forefront of anti-trans legislation in Kentucky. In 2023, he was the primary sponsor of a bill banning transgender students from using school restrooms and locker rooms that aligns with their gender identity.
Portions of that bill were folded into Senate Bill 150, an omnibus law that bans trans youth from accessing gender-affirming medication, restricts how K-12 schools teach about gender and sexuality, and mandates students use restrooms that correspond with the gender on their birth certificate, not their gender identity.
There’s no law in Kentucky dictating which bathrooms trans adults can use in public spaces, though Wesley indicated he intended to file one at the next legislative session, which begins in January 2026.
The Republican from Ravenna — a small city in Estill County, about 55 miles southeast of Lexington — told the Herald-Leader he felt obligated to be “my brother’s keeper” in that moment.
“What I mean by that: If that grandpa’s not around or that father, I’m going to be a voice for their children, their wife, when it comes to this nonsense here,” Wesley said. “I’m going to do that, and I believe every man should.
“We live in a time when people want to turn their head on everything. No, I’m not going to do that. I’m not up here to cater to this guy. All I know is, he was a man in a woman’s dress, and they can call it what they want, he was male. Be a man, don’t come in here with a bunch of little girls and they’re coming out traumatized,” he said.
Wesley added, “I don’t know who’s a predator, but I’ll tell you what, there’s a pretty good idea that something’s wrong with this nation and this world when you’ve got grown men fighting to get into the bathroom of the opposite sex.”
Marshall, who said she went to the bathroom for the same reasons dozens of other people did that day, questions this logic.
“If anyone’s a predator, it’s him preying on people who are using the bathroom trying to see what their genitals are, so he can make sure everyone fits into these nice clean boxes,” Marshall said. “The world is not as black and white as he would like to make it be. There are so many different shades of gray that he just doesn’t want to take into consideration because it doesn’t fit the narrative he’s written for himself.”
She added, “As it pertains to him calling me a pervert, I pay him no mind, because he doesn’t matter to me. Any power he gets is power the people have given him, and he is misusing that power, he is misrepresenting that power, and he is misrepresenting the facts. I refuse to let him have power over me.”
‘Trans people are Kentuckians’
Louisville Democratic Sen. Karen Berg told attendees at the Trans Day of Visibility rally, “People are mean.”
Last week, after Wesley policed Marshall’s restroom use, Berg approached the lawmaker on the House floor — another exchange caught on video and posted to social media. Berg’s trans son died by suicide in 2022.
“I said what I said, and I meant it. I meant every word of it,” Wesley said he told Berg, who touched his shoulder at the end of the exchange — a gesture Wesley and other conservatives called a “slap.”
Berg has since been sanctioned by House leadership and is no longer allowed on that chamber’s floor, House Speaker Davis Osborne said.
On Monday in Louisville, Berg said, “I can stand here and apologize for my cohorts, I can say we fought a good fight, we’ll keep fighting. To be able to go out in public and not be scared that you are going to be accosted. How much of an ask is that?”
Marshall, the final speaker, closed out the event by reminding her detractors: “Make no mistake: Trans people are Kentuckians. We contribute, we create, we care, we are part of the very heartbeat of this state. Our worth is not defined by the policies that try to erase us.
“To the leaders, the lawmakers, the decision makers, I ask you: What kind of Kentucky do you want to build? One that upholds the values of fairness and equality, or one that continues to push its own people to the margins?”
This story was originally published April 2, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
