Pride Action Tank, an AIDS Foundation Chicago(AFC) project and Community Restroom Access Project (CRAP) organizer, and Rainbow Café LGBTQ Center in Carbondale joined forces to hold a Restroom Rally July 18 at both The Hideout in Chicago and Lost Forest Coffeehouse and Pub in Carbondale to raise awareness about Illinois’ Equitable Restrooms Act.
The amended act, which was signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker in 2019, mandates that all public accommodations single-occupancy bathrooms in the state be designated as all-gender. The 2023 amended act now allows for multi-stalled, all-gender bathrooms in public spaces. CRAP was a primary advocate for these amendments passage.
Illinois is one of the first states to pass a multi-stalled, all-gender bathroom provision. This comes at a time when bathroom access has been restricted in GOP-controlled states nationwide.
The Illinois Equitable Restrooms Act was originally signed into law in 1991 to ensure women’s bathroom access was equal to men’s in all public accommodations. With the 2020 and 2023 additions, protection was expanded to include transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming people into spaces that align with their gender identity, as well as parents, guardians or other caregivers accompanying their child(ren), elders and/or those with disabilities.
The Hideout event speakers included trans community member storytellers Lizzie Maricich and Jay Myers, who shared their stories about navigating public bathrooms, as well as AFC Policy and Advocacy Special Projects Senior Manager Iana Amiscaray; CRAP Co-Collaborator August Hieber; and Pride Action Tank Executive Director and AFC Special Projects Innovation Vice President Kim Hunt.
Maricich spoke about her attendance at the 2024 commercial interior design (she used to work in that industry) expo NeoCon in June at Chicago’s Merchandise Mart “after I transitioned, where I would go as my authentic self.” She said her cis woman friend who is still in the industry went with her and insisted that they dress up, which felt good to her.
One of the things that surprised Maricich that day was when a group of teenagers gathered at their L stop entrance just created a pathway for them and didn’t stare or comment. They just went back to their conversation. Maricich said for the most part, Chicagoans conduct themselves the same way as those teenagers. She said the same was also true with everyone she and her friend encountered at the expo.
Maricich added that nonchalance was not the case with many politicians and religious leaders who “hold trans people up as examples of everything wrong with the world. We are a political football … dog whistle … and convenient diversion.”
Maricich said the moment that worried her at the expo was when she needed to use the bathroom. After a short conversation where Maricich shared her hesitancy with her friend, “She took me by the wrist and guided me to the women’s restroom.”
Maricich hesitated moment, then went in. No one cared that she was in the bathroom with them. Negative and harmful narratives created around trans people’s bathroom use are “created by people who don’t know us, don’t see us and don’t care to understand us … but maybe the rest of the country will catch up” with the people she encountered that expo event day,” she said.
Myers said 99% of the population doesn’t have to think about bathrooms, but for “us one percenters, it’s as the old song goes, ‘Always on My Mind.’ This simple task, going winky-tink, is one of the 32,000 points of stress the average trans person experiences in their lifetime.” He added that after experiencing all those other acts of humiliation, he has yet to “be totally shot down on a bathroom mission” and his success since he first started “passing as a male in 1984 depended on one of three things: quick thinking, humor or humility.”
Amiscaray spoke about the importance of public-access laws in the face of the onslaught of anti-trans bathroom bans in multiple states over the last year and a half. Amiscaray said that in 2025 there were over 1,000 anti-trans bills introduced across the United States and in Congress, and 59 of those were specifically anti-trans bathroom ban bills. She added that just in the past six months, 45 additional anti-trans bathroom ban bills have been introduced, which she called “very sobering news.”
Hieber said CRAP is at the “cutting edge” of what should be the norm everywhere at a time when “violence, bigotry, separation and segregation” is happening in too many places in the United States. They added that “today is a moment to say that we reject those things in public spaces” in the name of oppressing trans people, as well as people with disabilities, families and people who need caretakers. Heiber said, “All gender bathrooms are spaces where you can conduct a basic human necessity safely in a secure setting.”
Hunt recalled that CRAP was the first project that came to Pride Action Tank, and the meetings were “legendary, and it was a labor of love and frustration” as they worked to get laws passed. She also spoke about the role AFC Policy Advocacy Senior Director Timothy S. Jackson and Northwestern University Institute for Policy Research Operations and Outreach Senior Director Francesca Gaiba (both of whom were present at the event) played in the early days of CRAP’s existence.
Hunt added that “access to public accommodations is access to your humanity and what we see today is a total obliteration of that humanity, not just of trans people, but any historically oppressed population in the United States.” She also encouraged attendees to talk to their relatives and friends in other states to get out and vote to turn the situation around.
Other organizations who signed on in support of these events are ALMA Chicago, Black Alphabet, Downstate IL Trans Organization, Golden Rainbows of Illinois’ South, Life is Work, One Roof Chicago, Planned Parenthood of IL Action, Public Health Institute of Metropolitan Chicago, Trans Up Front and Youth Outlook.
Pride Action Tank announced that they will continue hosting educational events, community discussions and policy briefings across the state for the remainder of the year to continue to raise awareness about the laws.
Photos by Carrie Maxwell
