In a hearing that took only minutes, members of a state House committee voted to change Oklahoma law to explicitly ban men from being placed in women’s prisons.

Senate Bill 418, by state Sen. Julie Daniels and state Rep. Toni Hasenbeck, requires Oklahoma prisons to “designate each multi-occupancy restroom, changing room, and sleeping quarters for the exclusive use of either females or males.”

“Every restroom, changing room, or sleeping quarters within a covered entity that is designated for use by females or males shall only be used by members of the designated sex,” the legislation states. “No individual shall enter a restroom, changing room, or sleeping quarters that is designated for members of the opposite sex.”

Hasenbeck, R-Elgin, provided a succinct description of the bill when presenting it in committee.

“Senate Bill 418 protects the privacy and safety of incarcerated women,” Hasenbeck said.

Failure to abide by the proposed law would open the prison facility to lawsuits by female inmates under the bill’s provisions.

SB 418 previously passed out of the Oklahoma Senate on a 39-8 vote that broke along party lines, with Republicans in support and Democrats opposed.

SB 418 passed out of the House Public Safety Committee on a 7-0 vote. All those supporting the bill in committee were Republicans. The bill now proceeds to the House Judiciary and Public Safety Oversight Committee.

SB 418 advanced even as the Trump administration has threatened to pull federal funding from states that house men in women’s prisons. In recent years, some states have begun allowing men who claim to identify as women to be housed in women’s facilities.

In an April 8 interview on Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Trump administration has pulled $1.5 million in federal funding from the state of Maine due in part to that state’s policy of allowing men to be housed in women’s prisons.

“We pulled all nonessential funding from the Department of Corrections in Maine because they were allowing a man in a woman’s prison,” Bondi said. “A giant, six-foot-one, 245-pound guy who committed a double murder with a knife, stabbed his parents to death and the family dog, and he identified as a woman so they were letting him be housed in a female prison. No longer. We will pull your funding. We will protect women in prison. We will protect women in sports. We will protect women throughout this country.”

The practice of housing males in female correctional facilities if a man claims to identify as a woman has been associated with increased risk for women.

A review in England and Wales found that almost two-thirds of males in prison who now identify as transgender women have been convicted of sex offenses. That’s far higher than the overall rate in the male population. About 17 percent of men in prison in England and Wales have been convicted of sexual offences.

A recent report by the group Independent Women, “Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Stopping the Dangerous Policies Putting Men in Women’s Prisons,” noted similar statistics in the United States.

The report stated that more than a third of male inmates requesting transfer to female prisons in California are registered sex offenders. The Bureau of Federal Prisons has similarly reported that nearly half of trans-identifying male prisoners have sex convictions, compared to just under 12 percent of the general male prison population, the report stated.

The Independent Women report warned that “the prison context clearly illustrates that the cultural phenomenon of gender identity has painful consequences for the most vulnerable who cannot afford to entertain the idea that there are no innate differences between the sexes. Housing men—many of them with fully intact male genitalia and with criminal histories that include sexual convictions—in women’s prisons is a clear danger to the safety and dignity of female inmates.”

A 2020 poll found that only 7 percent of likely U.S. voters approved of policies that allow the placement of male sexual offenders or domestic abusers in women’s prisons. Nearly 67 percent of voters said they “strongly disagree” with such policies, including a majority of liberal voters.

A poll released this year in neighboring New Mexico found that 82 percent of citizens in that state disagreed with any policy that allows men to be housed in women’s prisons.

While the general public opposes the practice of housing male convicts in women’s prisons, the idea has been touted in academia.

The newest member of the University of Oklahoma College of Law faculty, Jessica Tueller, has argued that international law requires states to allow men in women’s prisons, bathrooms, and sports.

Tueller is the author of “Sex/Gender Segregation: A Human Rights Violation, Not a Protection,” an article published in the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism in 2024.

In the article, Tueller stated that those who advocate for having women housed separately from men in the prison system “generally dismiss evidence that integrating prisons is not only possible but desirable.”