Santa Monica Opens Door to a Restroom Controversy

Women of Santa Monica, wait no more.

The Santa Monica City Council is expected to give final approval tonight to a law entitling women to use men’s public restrooms if there are three or more people in the ladies’ line. If the situation is reversed--which it virtually never is--men would be permitted to use the women’s room.

Otherwise, women are women and men are men in Santa Monica. And never the twain shall meet in restrooms--unless one wishes to risk a maximum six months in jail, a $500 fine and a criminal record.

This piece of legislation is the work of Santa Monica’s idiosyncratic city attorney, Robert M. Myers, who drafted the law not to shorten the queue outside the women’s room but to provide police with a tool to stop illicit drug deals within.

An outspoken advocate of civil liberties, Myers has drawn criticism for his refusal to prosecute homeless people for minor nonviolent misdemeanors. He contends such prosecution is futile in light of jail overcrowding and a lack of sentencing options.

The city attorney said he would have no qualms about prosecuting people under the restroom law, however, because its No. 1 purpose is to protect women from men who are up to no good.

Myers said he drafted the law after learning from crime reports that men were entering women’s rooms at parks and beaches to deal drugs. Women have written to the city complaining of being frightened when confronted by a man upon entering a public bathroom, he said.

Tonight, however, Myers may face a challenge to his reasoning from the feminist front. Attorney Gloria Allred said she is going to the council meeting to protest the proposed law as a “great step backwards for women. . . . If Santa Monica gets its way, get ready for the potty police.”

After reading about the proposed loo law in The Times, Allred expressed her views on its effect in her weekly commentary for KABC-TV on Nov. 1.

“While the world is grappling with how to bring peace in the Middle East, and other great minds are trying to solve the deepening problem of economic recession in the U.S., the Santa Monica City Council is considering a proposal to make it a crime to go to the bathroom,” Allred said.

No state or local law makes it a crime for an adult to use restrooms earmarked for the opposite sex, Myers said. A state law banning loitering in the restroom is insufficient because it generally requires proving lewd conduct.

In most cases, Myers said, “There’s no justification for men to be in the women’s room or for women to be in the men’s room.”

By making an exception in cases where women are faced with serpentine lines, Myers said he was avoiding a situation that occurred recently in Texas in which a woman stymied by a long restroom line was prosecuted for answering nature’s call in the men’s room.

The usually garrulous Santa Monica council unanimously approved their city attorney’s proposed measure without discussion when it was introduced two weeks ago, but must vote on it again tonight.

Allred said she disagrees with Myers’ reasoning, saying the law penalizes women who might urgently need the facilities when fewer than three women are waiting in line, as the new ordinance requires. So, she reasons, if the law passes, women will have fewer rights than they do now.