Trans Woman Breaks Wyoming’s New Bathroom Ban In State Capitol, Nothing Happens

Nothing happened Tuesday as a transgender woman flagrantly violated a newly implemented Wyoming law restricting people to the restroom corresponding to their birth sex in public buildings. 

Rihanna Kelver, 27, approached a Wyoming Highway Patrol officer stationed at a desk near the restroom and announced an intention to use the restroom. 

“OK,” the officer responded.

Kelver then entered the women’s restroom next to Gov. Mark Gordon’s office in the Wyoming State Capitol at 12:30 p.m. and exited the capitol via the front entrance moments later. 

“Now, I don’t know what I’m going to do with my evening,” Kelver said after walking out of the Capitol. “I didn't plan anything. Kept it really free.”

Before entering the Capitol, Kelver told a small group of seven supporters that there was a chance of an arrest. 

Wyoming’s new “bathroom bill” that went into effect Tuesday does not create criminal liability for a person found violating the act. In Florida where there’s a similar law, a transgender woman was arrested after attempting to violate that state’s bathroom bill. 

Florida’s ban however, unlike Wyoming’s, has criminal enforcement provisions. 

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Kelver said.

In the end, nothing happened.

Kelver’s former English teacher, Nikki Bondurant, announced that Kelver would be entering the restroom and checked to make sure no one else was in there. 

“I didn’t want anyone else to get caught up in anything,” Kelver said afterwards. 

Bondurant said she wanted to support Kelver, who is from Laramie and now lives in Colorado.

Kelver has been an advocate of the transgender community for a long time, Bondurant added. 

Kelver ran to be Laramie High School’s student body president as a sophomore and used the platform to “come out” to the entire school, Bondurant told Cowboy State Daily. Kelver also ran for a school board seat as an 18-year-old two years later. 

“Direct action is the best course to address this bill potentially further and also to put some more public eyes on this issue and have conversations when I can,” Kelver told Cowboy State Daily. I hope to achieve a message to the people that it’s OK to be trans. It's OK to be the people that me and my other trans people are.”

Publicity Stunt For A Transgender Cause

Some of new law’s co-sponsors called the move a political stunt — and one that misses the heart of the legislation.

“The fact that they’re (Kelver) publicizing this and making this into something that they’re trying to —I guess — get their name known (makes me) feel sad,” House Speaker Pro Tempore Jeremy Haroldson, R-Wheatland, told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday. “I don’t think that’s it at all. 

“I believe this is just protecting spaces for our women and our girls — and that’s predominantly what needs to be addressed here and highlighted here, and has nothing to do with this individual.”

Rep. Tom Kelly, R-Sheridan, said it’s a “publicity stunt for a transgender cause,” but that the law seeks to honor “objective reality.”

As for this protest and any other maneuvers that may follow, Kelly said he doesn’t know what to expect.

“This is a new thing in American government in general, not just in Wyoming,” he said.

Rep. Joel Guggenmos, R-Riverton, feels sorry for the protestor, he told Cowboy State Daily in a Tuesday text message.

“This whole trans issue is about getting attention since it has been glorified in certain groups in society,” said Guggenmos, saying he would prefer not to give Kelver the attention Kelver seeks.

“I feel sorry for him actually. He is trying to be someone he can never become,” said Guggenmos.

The bill’s main sponsor, Rep. Martha Lawley, R-Worland, said it’s about protecting the “very few spaces that offer privacy and safety” for women.

“Biological men who claim to be women do not understand what it is like for women and girls to feel vulnerable and unsafe or to be threatened or attacked by biological males who insist on invading these private and exclusive spaces,” said Lawley. “Unfortunately, today’s manufactured stunt makes it easier for women’s very real concerns about safety and privacy to be mocked and disregarded.”

Consequences For Taxpayer Only

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus, a group of Republican state lawmakers that backed the law during this year’s legislative session in that same Capitol building, called on Gordon on Tuesday to use the Wyoming Highway Patrol’s Capitol security detail to “defend House Bill 72.” 

Gordon’s spokesman and the Capitol trooper station did not immediately return Cowboy State Daily requests for comment.

“It’s time to show women — real women — what it means to be the Equality state,” wrote the caucus in a Monday statement.

If the law functions as written, the only person who could suffer consequences under it, ultimately, would be the taxpayer. 

Though it has some exceptions for custodial staffers cleaning the bathrooms and other situations, the law generally bans cross-sex use of bathrooms and changing rooms in public facilities and prisons. 

It gives a mechanism for women who encounter males in those bathrooms, and vice versa, to sue the governmental entity that oversees that facility. 

The governmental entity becomes liable for damages, reasonable attorney fees and costs when it does not take “reasonable steps” like posting signage and adopting enforcement policies. 

In the case of Kelver’s protest, Bondurant’s efforts to clear the bathroom beforehand removed potential plaintiffs, which therefore removed the law’s enforcement mechanism.

As of June 28, however Kelver was bracing and hoping for criminal charges, writing in a Facebook post that that would open the door for direct legal challenge of the law.

Matthew Christian can be reached at matthew@cowboystatedaily.com and Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.