By now, we're used to seeing "looney left" laws and rules in places like California, but they're beginning to creep into Texas, too. El Paso has passed a new ordinance that would make the Golden State proud. "Business owners in El Paso are now required to have gender neutral signage for certain public bathrooms," says James Quintero, policy director with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. "San Francisco has the poop patrol, and now El Paso has the potty police."
The ordinance makes it a Class C misdemeanor crime for businesses to mislabel single-use restrooms. All bathroom jokes aside, Quintero says this illustrates a more serious point. "While a lot of us look at the situation in El Paso and think how extreme and crazy it is, we also need to recognize that it is another symptom of a larger problem," he tells KTRH. "The far left is using home-rule authority in Texas to effectively impose very extreme ideas on the general public."
City and county leaders often tout home-rule authority as a protection of local control against the state. But Quintero argues when these communities abuse that authority to push an activist agenda, the state has the right and the obligation to step in. "What the legislature needs to do is rein in this bad behavior using pre-emption, and force cities to get back to the basics," he says. "We want them to fill potholes and police the streets, not impose their radical agenda."
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