Wyoming passed a new law banning trans people from using facilities matching their gender this week.

Gov. Mark Gordon (R) signed H.B. 72 this past Monday, which requires people to use facilities — including restrooms, locker rooms, and prisons — associated with their sex assigned at birth. The law, which goes into effect in July, allows people to sue if they encounter a transgender person in a multi-occupancy changing, restroom, or sleeping space in a public building.

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The law will also allow inmates to sue prisons if they’re required to share sleeping space with a trans person who was assigned a different sex at birth than them.

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Gordon signed the measure quietly on Monday, listing it in a news release about 20 bills that he signed or vetoed that day without discussing his reasoning for signing that bill. The Cowboy State Daily said that his office declined to offer comment on it when asked.

State Rep. Martha Lawley (R) sponsored H.B. 72 and said that the bill would make “women and girls” feel “safe.” She was likely only referring to cisgender girls and women since studies have shown that trans girls and women are much less safe when forced to use men’s facilities.

“This bill ensures that women and girls can feel safe and respected in places where privacy is essential — bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and correctional facilities,” she wrote in an op-ed.

LGBTQ+ advocates denounced the bill.

“Like previous efforts to expel people of color, people with disabilities, and others from communal spaces, these arguments for privacy just mask a fear of difference,” the ACLU of Wyoming said in a statement. “Eroding the fundamental rights of transgender people is dangerous for every one of us.”

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