Leaving office, Rep. Mauree Turner goes out swinging

Despite plea, Legislature passes and Gov. Stitt signs anti-trans “Women’s Bill of Rights.”

June 13, 2024

Representative Mauree Turner, the first Muslim elected to the Oklahoma Legislature and the first non-binary person elected to a state-level position in U.S. history, gave an impassioned debate against a bill that—under the guise of protecting women’s rights—will discriminate against trans people.

Turner, who is not seeking reelection to the House District 88 seat they have held since 2020, said that thousands of young trans and gender non-conforming people who live in Oklahoma—many of whom reached out to the Oklahoma City Democrat and thanked Turner for representing them—will be harmed by the policies put forth in HB 1449, which was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Kevin Stitt on May 31.

“It makes me wonder, what is the point of folks being seen by me, of being visible, when you use that visibility to target and harm and to attempt to erase me and my community?” Turner said on the House floor on May 29. “I want to be very clear about something. Voting for this bill is to further the harm that resulted in the death of Nex Benedict (the Owasso teen who committed suicide after fighting with students at his high school). Voting for this bill is a direct attack on my existence.”

Religious missionaries, Indian boarding schools, and other government-sanctioned programs have been trying for centuries to remove trans people from society, Turner said. “But they have failed to wipe us out because two-spirit, transgender, and gender non-conforming people have always been here. We will always be here, right here in Oklahoma. And you can attack us in words and in the policy you poorly create, but that won’t change the fact that your attempts are harmful. They are harmful and wrong. Two-spirit, transgender, and gender non-conforming people and so many other gender expansive people belong here in Oklahoma,” they said.

The bill’s author, Representative Toni Hasenbeck (R-Elgin), maintains the new law will preserve biological sex as a distinct legal category. “The persistent encroachment of men into women-only spaces, whether that’s in locker rooms or entrepreneurship programs, threatens the health, careers and lives of women across the world,” Hasenbeck said in a statement. “The signing of the Women’s Bill of Rights makes permanent the responsibility we all have to ensure women and girls are safe in their protected spaces.”

Co-author Senator Jessica Garvin, in a statement released after the bill was signed, said that women today are having to fight again to achieve the same rights and protections afforded to men. “I am certain those women who fought for equality never dreamed we would be back here, over one hundred years later, fighting for the rights of women all over again,” she said.

During debate on final passage of HB 1449, Hasenbeck admitted under questioning by Democrats that the bill would not guarantee women equal pay as men or provide women with increased access to reproductive healthcare. What the bill will do is force trans women convicted of crimes to be incarcerated with male inmates, force domestic violence shelters to choose who to serve or risk losing federal funding due to anti-discrimination rules, and force Oklahoma’s public-school trans students to use the locker rooms and restrooms of their biological birth, regardless of their gender status. Benedict, who identified as male, was using a girl’s restroom when other students bullied him.

In one of their final speeches on the House floor, Turner said they thought about what legacies would be left behind by passage of a bill that purports to protect women but instead harms people who don’t conform to societal norms. “The anti-trans policy and rhetoric that has come out of this body, that has come out of this bill, and the culmination of it over the last four years, is absolutely horrific. That you could sit here in on this House floor and create a piece of legislation that claims to be a women’s bill of rights, and, as we have seen, has not codified any actual rights. (Oklahoma is) one of the worst states for women to live. Maternal mortality is absolutely abhorrent in this state. But what we want to continue to do is put our most vulnerable populations in the crosshairs in this body, when we could have created any amount of good that makes sure women survive in this state?” said Turner. “The sleep I get at the end of the night is deeply disturbed by the things that we talk about and we do in this building. And if you could sleep and pass a piece of legislation like this, I pray for you.”

Governor Stitt issued a similar executive order in 2023 that dealt with state agencies, buildings, and employees. HB 1449 will take effect on November 1.

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