Lavatories of Democracy: Recognizing a Right to Public Toilets through International Human Rights and State Constitutional Law
Richard M. Weinmeyer* | 26.2 | Citation: Richard M. Weinmeyer, Lavatories of Democracy: Recognizing a Right to Public Toilets through International Human Rights and State Constitutional Law, 26 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 402 (2024).
The United States is a public toilet nightmare. Truly public toilets are a rarity, while the restrooms provided by private businesses are inconsistently available via “customer only” policies and the discriminatory actions of owners and their employees. Some jurisdictions have made tepid attempts at providing more bathrooms, but all have failed. The result: an accumulation of entirely preventable public health harms, including outbreaks of infectious disease, illness, and dignitary harms.
This Article is the first to provide a comprehensive review of U.S. toilet law—the laws and policies that determine where bathrooms are provided and who has access to them—and diagnose its failings. Despite municipal, state, and federal actors’ efforts to expand availability, members of the public are too often forced to rely on the private provision of bathrooms. It is clear that the status quo has failed to address this most basic human biological necessity.
This Article makes the case that recognizing a state constitutional right to public bathrooms is the best way to address this problem. Drawing from recent developments in international human rights, it sets forth the basis on which courts could recognize a right to public toilets as part of a state constitution’s public health provision.
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* Jaharis Faculty Fellow in Health Law and Intellectual Property, DePaul University College of Law (starting July 2024, Assistant Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago School of Law). Ph.D., Northwestern University; J.D., University of Minnesota Law School; M.A., University of Minnesota; M.Phil., Cambridge University; B.A., University of Washington.