With blonde hair flowing over her shoulders and spilling onto a blousy blue mini dress, Landon Patterson sat in front of the Missouri House Emerging Issues Committee Monday.

The committee was debating bills that sought to separate public restrooms and changing rooms by sex as assigned at birth, rather than gender identity. The bills varied in scope, but they all would require Patterson to use the men’s restroom, which she hasn’t used in over a decade.

“It caused no harm (to use women’s facilities), not to my classmates, not to my school, not to my community,” she said. “It gave me dignity and allowed me to focus on my education instead of fighting to exist.”

The hearing came three days after lawmakers in neighboring Kansas passed a law invalidating the licenses of those who have changed their gender marker and barring transgender Kansans from using public restrooms that align with their gender identity.

Some worried that Missouri was pursuing the same kind of law, with one bill in particular that would create new definitions of “male” and “female” throughout state law. These definitions separate the sexes by whether their reproductive systems utilize eggs or sperm.

Keith Rose, who is a legal advocate with nonprofit law firm Center for Growing Justice, said this could affect whether Missourians can change gender markers on their birth certificates. Currently, the state requires proof of gender reassignment surgery or a court order to switch one’s gender marker — a rule established in 2024 after lawmakers complained about a transgender woman using a dressing space at a private gym.

The bill, filed by Republican state Rep. Becky Laubinger of Park Hills, would require all public buildings to separate restrooms, changing rooms and sleeping areas by her proposed definition of sex.

It is a protective measure, she said, for spaces where people are “most vulnerable.” She gave a secondhand story about two men “who made no attempt to look female” who used a women’s restroom and claimed they identified as women.

As Democratic lawmakers on the committee pressed Laubinger about what danger her legislation seeks to protect people from, the two sides agreed. It wasn’t transgender people that were the problem, but predators who Laubinger described as “riding the coattails of people who are gender dysphoric.”

As long as places allow transgender people to use facilities aligning with their gender identity, she said, those seeking to do harm could claim to be transgender.

But Democrats and a majority of those who testified Monday said “bathroom bans” place targets on people’s backs rather than protect.

Stevie Miller, a West Plains resident, said his presence in a women’s room, as the bill would require, would undoubtedly make families uncomfortable.

“I’m scared of what will happen to me when someone sees me follow their little girl into the restroom, following the law,” he said. “I am supposed to go in that room.”

Other transgender Missourians posed similar hypotheticals: did lawmakers really want them in the other restroom? The transgender men, many bearded and broad shouldered, worried they would be unwelcome in the women’s room. Transgender women told the committee that the legislation would put them at greater risk of assault.

May Hall, a Columbia resident, said they use men’s facilities when a place is busy and there are enough people around. Hall, who usually banters through public testimony with a few quips and jabs, was unusually bleak.

“I’ve been grabbed. I’ve been groped. I’ve been called slurs. I’ve been cat-called,” Hall said. “It is not comfortable.”

Laubinger’s bill would be enforced through lawsuits, allowing those who witness someone in the opposite sex’s restrooms to sue the public entity operating the facilities.

A bill by state Rep. Brandon Phelps, a Warrensburg Republican, would withhold state funding when a violation occurs. While more narrow than Laubinger’s proposal, Phelps’ bill would create sex-designated restrooms for public buildings, K-12 schools and universities.

It would also bar multi-occupancy restrooms that don’t have male and female delineations, such as the all-gender facilities at the Kansas City Municipal Airport.

The logistics, though, drew questions. State Rep. Wick Thomas, a Kansas City Democrat and the House’s first nonbinary lawmaker, asked what someone would do if they think a transgender person is using the wrong restroom.

“You would call the police,” Phelps said. “Let them take care of it.”

Aro Royston, a LGBTQ+ advocate from St. Louis, said police presence “threatens (his) life” as a Black man.

“These bills create hostile environments that drive people away rather than drive people to strengthen communities, he said. “This bill also creates detrimental problems, and it is unenforceable without violating everyone’s privacy.”

The third bill heard Monday, filed by Republican state Rep. Wendy Hausman of St. Peters, takes a different approach to bathroom restrictions. The legislation would protect private schools from being sued for having sex-designated spaces.

In Missouri, a handful of cases have addressed public schools’ restrictions on transgender students’ use of restrooms. Last year, the state Supreme Court ruled against a former Blue Springs student who alleged the school district discriminated against him on the basis of sex for preventing him from using locker rooms. The court’s decision, though, was based on a lack of evidence and did not seek to rule on the constitutionality of restroom restrictions.

Hausman, like the two other bills’ sponsors, said the legislation was a safeguard.

“It’s not an attack on any group of individuals,” she said. “This is just a protection for these private schools and what they would like to do.”

The committee did not take immediate action on the legislation, adjourning after five hours of testimony.