Wyoming Republicans are calling on Governor Mark Gordon to take action after a 27-year-old man used the women’s bathroom at the state capitol, in defiance of state laws.
The Wyoming Freedom Caucus said Tuesday that Gordon, a Republican, allowed Rihanna Kelver, a transgender identifying activist, to disregard House Bill 72, which requires government buildings to limit access to private spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms by sex. Kelver, a man who identifies as a woman, was filmed leaving a woman’s bathroom outside of the governor’s office in Cheyenne on Tuesday, the same day House Bill 72 took effect.
Kelver had broadcast his intention to use the women’s bathroom in the weeks leading up to the Tuesday stunt. The Cowboy State Daily reported Tuesday that a Wyoming Highway Patrol officer said “OK” when the activist showed up outside the governor’s office and announced his intention to use the women’s bathroom.
Republican State Rep. Rachel Rodriguez Williams, the chair of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, said that the state has an obligation to uphold the law — which she says failed when Kelver was able to access the women’s bathroom with no consequences.
“It’s unfortunate that the governor’s capitol law enforcement, which is the highway patrol, gave the guy permission to violate the law today,” she told The Daily Wire. “This obviously was a planned event, and it was posted to Facebook by the individual many months ago. So we believe that the governor did know about it and that he did know it was coming yet did nothing to stop it.”
“This is a victory of the radical trans agenda over the rights of women,” she added.
Kelver has been featured in glowing profiles by outlets like the New York Times.
“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 on Tuesday. “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.”
House Bill 72 allows for a cause of action for women or others harmed to hold the government liable for damages if the law is not upheld.
“We need them to draw a line in the sand once and for all and stand up for women, real women,” Rodriguez-Williams told The Daily Wire. “While there was no woman inside the bathroom, the lack of action, it sends a message to women all over our state that you’re on your own.”
In Florida, a 20-year-old transgender-identifying man was arrested after entering the women’s bathroom at a Florida House office building.
Gordon has often clashed with conservative legislators in Wyoming. He previously vetoed a bill that would have said abortion is not health care, and a bill that required ultrasounds for medication abortions. He has also been critical of several transgender-related legislation passed by the Republican supermajority.
He criticized a bill known as the “What is a Woman Act” that defined male and female as motivated by a desire to “scratch a welcome national political itch” and he called a bill keeping males out female sports as “draconian” and “discriminatory.” He allowed both bills to become law without his signature.
Gordon’s office did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Wire.
