A girl friend asked this question and I don’t have the answer. The way she worded it was "Is it illegal to deny a patron the use of the restroom in a public establishment?
What’s the dope?
A girl friend asked this question and I don’t have the answer. The way she worded it was "Is it illegal to deny a patron the use of the restroom in a public establishment?
What’s the dope?
You mean like a courthouse or a library? Or do you think that Starbuck’s (a privately own corporation) shouldn’t make you ask for a key to the bathroom.
If the restroom is inside of a private establishment, like a restaurant, my guess is “yes.” If the restroom is like a rest-area kind of thing, the police could probably get you with a peace disturbance or something if you’re transgendered and went into the “wrong bathroom”.
Well, is she asking if everyplace has to have a “public” restroom, or if you can legally deny use of an obviously public restroom? The answer to the first is no - there can be a bathroom on the premises which is not open to the public, but only employees. There are some places which have to have public bathrooms by law (restaurants being one, public streetfairs being another), but your local video store probably does not.
Would you believe there’s a restroom lobby on Capitol hill right now trying to change this? Of course there is, this is America! Meet The American Restroom Association.
As to the second, I have no cites, so I’ll leave that to someone else.
My vet shares a parking lot with a credit union where folks cash their paychecks. They have had to put up a sign saying that their restrooms are only for their clients. I am pretty sure that the vet qualifies as a public establishment.
I hope they are not breaking a law.
When we built the new annex on at the museum, we started having to deal with people coming in “just to use the restroom.” In a perfect world, this wouldn’t have been an issue, but this isn’t a perfect world and some people are really nasty in their bathroom habits.
As a result, our director gave us all authorization to refuse entry to people who just wanted to use the toilets. We say that they’re “just for patrons”.
Why would you think that a privately owned and operated business would be considered a public establishment? :dubious: I’d like to be able to take a dump in one of the top floor restrooms of Trump Tower but imagine that the Donald may have me removed before I got very far. I only mention this because I actually saw a deranged street person take a dump on the corner of South Central Park across from the Trump Tower (in board daylight no less) on my first visit to NYC with my mom in 2002. :eek:
When you gotta go, you gotta go. If the prevailing opinion is that businesses don’t have to allow deranged homeless people use their facilities, and there isn’t a truly public restroom with walking distance of South Central Park, I would say that was a perfectly reasonable thing to expect. I would think lack of public facilities would be a valid defense to any criminal charges that might proceed from your example. Just because they are deranged doesn’t mean their bodily functions are suspended.
As in “open to the public.” Not as in “publicly owned” vs. “privately owned.”
I presume there is no question as to whether an establishment that restricts its patrons to a particular group of people would be legally required to open its toilets to the world, so to speak.
How would you define “public establishment?”
You would be wrong. The expectation is that everyone will take care of their bodily habits in private, and under no circumstances would “Well, there wasn’t a restroom near where I was” be a valid defense to criminal charge of exposing yourself or creating a disturbance in public. There is no legal obligation for any business to offer truly public restrooms – meaning open to the general public, without regard to whether the person is a customer or patron. Even truly public restrooms, such as in parks, may be closed at the governing entity’s discretion, like at night or in the winter.
A vet’s office would not be a public establishment. They don’t have serve people who own tigers if they don’t want to, or let the people from the check cashing place use their bathroom. :rolleyes:
How about you back off the rolleyes until you provide some, you know, content? What do tigers have to do with anything. Is it your contention that public establishments have to do whatever the public wants? I asked you for a definition of a public establishment. Can you provide one, or is snark all you have?
If you hang out a shingle and invite the patronage of the public, which is exactly what a veterinarian does, you are a public establishment. If you will take a breath, slow down, and read my post, you will realize that I do not think the vet should provide bathrooms to the public, but only to their clients. However, the vet is not a private establishment; it is a public one. It is open to the public. I don’t know how much simpler I can make it.
Well you do seem a bit confused right here, hoping that they are not breaking the law. My dad owned his own 24 hour diner and often told people off of the street that they could not use his facilities if they did not patronize the business. The police were called one time and the cops just rolled there eyes and said that he could do that because it was his place and he could make the rules. It’s not like he was not serving people because of their skin color, that would be a civil right violation.
It cost a private business money to provide bathrooms and sometimes, espicially for places that serve food and drink it is the law that they provide them for their customers. Just because you are on a bus line does not require you to provide a bathroom for the public at large.
Please provide a cite that a privately owned business is required to provide public bathroom facilities to non-customers.
OK, to make it simpler.
The OP: Is this illegal?
Me : I hope not.
Get it?
Which is what I have been saying.
Man, I give up.
Still no definition for public establishment? Third request.
A business open to the public (that is, not a private club) is generally considered a public business or establishment. This has become a term of importance with regard to smoking bans, for example. See, for example, the new Ohio Revised Statues §3794.01, defining “public place” as “an enclosed area to which the public is invited or in which the public is permitted and that is not a private residence.”
There are other laws that similarly affect such establishments.
Thank you.
I think in some locations the law makes a difference between those serving drink and food and those businesses that do not. It is reasonable to expect someone eating or drinking would have to use the restroom. If you’re coming in to buy a plant it probably isn’t.
I think business KEY the restroom for a varitety of reasons. First of all people tend to make less of a mess if it’s key’d. They know the owner can inspect it after their use. Not much of a deterrent but it works. Second of all restrooms are used for quick sex, drug deals and such. If it’s key’d and that goes down and they get caught the police have a witness, perhaps in the guy giving out the key.
I don’t think the public realizes sometimes there isn’t a bathroom. For instance I worked at a small hotel, and we had a bathroom for employees. It was located way behind the cash register, behind the keys and next to the change safe. There is no way in HELL I was letting a customer go behind all that to use the bathroom.
I worked at another hotel, a Days Inn, and we didn’t have a bathroom at all. People would come in demanding to use one. I’d say there is none. They’d say what do you do. I would tell them, first of all it’s not your business, but if you must know, we use the Denny’s across the parking lot. What we really did, since we had 24 hour housekeeping and rarely sold out, we’d use the room close to the lobby for our restroom. If we needed to sell it then we’d use the Denny’s.
For many trans people, there is no “right bathroom,” there are two “wrong” ones. Not just trans people, but any gender-nonconforming people are liable to get clocked trying to use the loo.* Not everyone fits neatly into the gender binary, lots of people are in-between. A survival strategy when on the road is to head for Starbucks with their unisex loos.*
Loo experience has also taught me something about gender performance. No one has ever objected to my using the ladies’ room as long as I’m wearing heels, skirt, and lipstick. I smile and make eye contact and never have a problem.
*Especially since single-person rooms are an economic luxury in construction design. Gita Mehta’s interesting book Karma Cola is about culture shock between India and the West. She considered the age-old Indian villagers’ practice of going out to the fields to void in the open air. By contrast she said for Westerners it’s all very well to insist on “Defecation for one, James.”
I can’t imagine why it would be illegal. There are a thousand restaurants that won’t let you use the bathroom unless you buy something from them.