The state’s attorney general said Friday that a Life Time Fitness location in St. Louis may be responsible for both civil and criminal charges because it supposedly “adopted a policy” that let transgender women use the women’s locker rooms.
AG of Missouri In a letter to the CEO of Life Time Fitness, Andrew Bailey said that he would not allow biological males to use any bathroom they wanted, even though this is common in company policy books.
“While it might be considered fashionable in certain corporate boardrooms to pretend that biology is irrelevant, the American heartland still lives in reality,” he noted. “Missourians recognize that allowing adult men to openly invade and disrobe in spaces set aside for women and young girls is indefensible and places political correctness above public safety.”
An investigation was started after a transgender woman, 52 years old, went into the women’s locker room, which made some Life Time customers very angry. Some of the staff told customers they needed to use different words when talking about the trans person.
“Even more concerning is the fact that instead of taking the safety concerns from your gym members seriously, you rudely correct them and insist they call this biological male by the ‘correct pronouns,'” Bailey said.
After many people complained to his office that “the gym has actively allowed a biological male to use women and girls’ private spaces,” he said he was looking into bringing criminal charges against them under different laws.
The Missouri attorney general pointed to a law called “Trespass in the first degree,” saying that he had already set an example of how breaking the law it was for a biological male to enter a place only for women.
“[T]he Court confirmed that a male’s presence in a female’s public restroom constitutes criminal trespass,” he added. “When restrooms are separately designated for males and females, one is only permitted to use the restroom designed for his or her gender.”
Bailey also said that a biological man who performs sex acts in a female space “may be subject to further criminal liability for multiple sexual offenses, including sexual misconduct in the first degree and the felony offense of sexual misconduct involving a child.”
The AG said that the Life Time gym’s rules “enable potentially criminal behavior,” and he wrote to promise that this would not happen again “under my watch.” “If you insist on endangering women and young girls in our state, in open defiance of the law, be assured you will face the consequences.”
There was a statement from the company earlier that said it was following state rules.
“At Life Time, we know that people have different ideas about who should be able to use the dressing rooms. As a business, we promise to follow the law when it comes to public accommodations everywhere we do business. When someone joins LifeTime, we check their state-issued IDs to make sure they are who they say they are. According to the company, the State of Missouri lets people change their gender designation on their state-issued driver’s license.
“In this case, the member showed a state-issued driver’s license that said she was a woman, and Missouri law says we can’t refuse or treat people differently because of their gender.” The member should use the women’s changing room at LifeTime because of this.
