Rep. Clemons asks State for opinion on whether adding locks to multi-stall bathrooms in City buildings violates building codes
BY JENNIFER CABRERA
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – In response to reports that the City of Gainesville has added locks to the external doors of multi-stall bathrooms and made them all gender-neutral, Representative Chuck Clemons has asked the Florida Building Commission for a non-binding advisory opinion on whether this practice violates building codes.
The change appears to be a response to CS/HB 1521, passed in 2023, which requires educational institutions, detention facilities, correctional institutions, juvenile correctional facilities, and public buildings with a restroom or changing facility to designate separate facilities based on biological sex or to provide one-person unisex facilities.
The statute requires that the applicable governmental entity “shall, for each public building under its jurisdiction, establish disciplinary procedures for any employee of the governmental entity who willfully enters… a restroom or changing facility designated for the opposite sex at such public building and refuses to depart when asked to do so by any other employee of the governmental entity.”
By adding locks to the external doors of restrooms, Clemons argues, the City has effectively converted them to single-stall restrooms because any person entering the restroom can lock out other users; the petition states that this is “a failed attempt to stymie the implementation of CS/HB1521.”
The petition argues that by effectively diminishing the number of toilets available at any given time, the practice “is rife with the potential of violating the required minimum numbers” in OSHA regulations and the Florida Building Codes.
The petition also argues that Florida’s “Potty Parity” bill, passed in 1992 in response to long lines for women wanting to use the restroom at UF football games, “leaves no question that we must provide separate facilities for men and women, directing the Florida Building Commission to incorporate into the Building Code the ratio of public restroom facilities a public building MUST provide for men and women.”
The Florida Building Codes also establish the minimum number of toilet facilities that a public building must provide in relation to the population it serves, so, the petition states, making all restrooms unisex would “also risk violating the number of facilities we are required to make available to our customers and employees by making the restrooms single-use.”
A visitor to City Hall told Alachua Chronicle that restrooms are no longer designated for men or women and have sliding bolts on the external doors. Due to the gender-neutral designation on the restrooms, a restroom user who forgets to slide the bolt may be surprised when someone of the opposite sex enters the restroom.
Alachua Chronicle asked the City of Gainesville which restrooms have the locks described in the petition, and City Spokeswoman Rossana Passaniti replied, “There are only two restrooms in City Hall with locks – added after renovations were completed in January 2022, prior to the passage of the legislation.”
“A visitor to City Hall told Alachua Chronicle that restrooms are no longer designated for men or women and have sliding bolts on the external doors. Due to the single-sex designation on the restrooms. . . ,” This text is self-contradictory–how can restrooms “no longer designated for men or women” have “single-sex designation on the restrooms”? Please describe believably what’s happening and then it can be open for reasoned discussion . . . I think that I understand what has happened–all former multistall single-sex restrooms are now sex-undesignated single-user rooms regardless of number of stalls, which might contradict building codes, but the article is not really clear what the situation is.
I changed “single-sex” to “gender-neutral” – does that help? The bottom line is that anyone can use either restroom.
Thanks, yes! I was distracted from replying while listening to the SOTU delivered by the POTUS who is obviously on pervitin (crystal meth), like most of his sea-lion-clapping fans in the House. Hope that he knows how to avoid meth mouth.
I feel your pain Hethe. I enjoyed watching Speaker Johnson’s.
You are part the local 3%
Boys in Girls bathrooms and vise versa?! Effing demonrats/liberals ruin EVERYTHING!
It’s the commie way
Many people wonder when America will collapse. Stop wondering. It already has collapsed. It has become a warped den of perversion that caters to the mentally ill and depraved. Just don’t expect it to function much longer. It is going to disintegrate very soon. Chaos is on the way. And poverty. Lots of poverty.
Get on a boat snowflake.
Stay out of the girl’s bathroom, pedo scum.
Luckily the rest of the world is doing worse, thanks to globalism. The 3% think we need MORE globalism to fix what they broke 🤡👹💩🍦🍦🍦WEF
Waste pits such as Gainesville will be in ruins while its many degenerates and perverts wander around aimlessly wondering what went wrong in their “safe space” and why with their useless UF degrees they cannot eat. The only employment for all the Gainesville-type freak soyboys who pee sitting down like “jazzmen” will be to “identify” as croaking toads squatting on a mushroom in a carnival next to the dog faced boy and the giant 600 pound fat lady, entertaining their Asian masters who will look on in amusement.
You were apparently stoned when you posted that Snowflake, but try to keep me out of your sex fantasies.
When are you moving?
Florida will eventually secede from the rancid union run by psychotic leftists. Gainesville has already seceded from the human race. Its inhabitants will play no role in the new Florida, as they are incapable of any real useful work, instead obsessing over their gender confusion and where and how to pee.
Wonder who gave the order for this to be done? Probably over paid and over assisted Curry.
Common sense doesn’t exist in Wokevilles like our *fair* community. Here, the 97% must suffer for the 3% who elected our dear leaders. Didn’t Clemons know that? 👹🤡💩🍦🍦🍦3%
Our place of abode has become a pariah, I wish I was not so old, I would shade the dust of his place off me, even if I could just get out of the county, I feel it would be a relief.
I would have the fire marshal look at this too. May be a life safety issue as well. Someone shouldn’t be able to enter a multi stall restroom and have the ability to lock the door while others may also be inside the restroom in another stall.
Brilliant! Do not argue this particular issue on the basis of locking people out. Argue on the basis of being able to lock others in a multi-stall restroom. This potentially creates fire safety and other life safety issues.
The City leadership just cut the number of bathrooms by 2/3rds or 3/4ths. Seems like an immediate lack of compliance with both the ADA and Building Codes.
Seems like the open-door liberals will remain full of crap.
The real story of bathrooms in Gainesville is that a gang of incompetent leftist nitwits in local government with no common sense repeatedly try to appease a small bunch of bloviating gender-confused psychos who belong in mental hospitals and the result is once again total systemic dysfunction. Want a window into the collapse of common sense and societal collapse in America? Look no farther than Gainesville. So diverse. So woke. So rotted!
Get lost Paco.
I mean physically. You’re already gone mentally.
A man of “jazz.” A “man” who wears panties and high heels. A pedo pervert. A local government employee.
Both hands on the keyboard Paco, and hope the wife doesn’t catch you.
I own a business and have made payroll for 40+ years.
How about you?
Man of “jazz.” Screeching little commie belching out high treble cries. Woke, woke, woke. Another of the castrati. Huge shrill mouth. No gonads.