UPDATE: Ohio Woman Targeted for Using Changing Room Found Not Guilty
The bogus charges were the result of Republican officials in Xenia, Ohio targeting a trans woman for harassment for using a changing room according to YMCA policy and state law.
by Evan Urquhart
The Springfield News-Sun and local Ohio LGBTQ+ media are reporting that Rachel Glines, a trans woman who was charged with multiple counts of misdemeanor public indecency merely for changing in a YMCA women’s locker room, has been found not guilty. The News-Sun quoted a statement from her lawyers:
screenshot from the Springfield News-Sun
The lawyers’ statement hints at the unprecedented facts of this case. In February, we reported that the president of the Xenia city council, Republican Wil Urshel, bragged on video about having approached three seperate families to get them to file police report. Urshel made it clear that this was part of a larger strategy to challenge YMCA policy allowing trans people to use the changing facilities alongside other members of their gender.
The Sun-Times’ reporting on the case included some previously unknown details, including the fact that nothing was ever actually exposed (the witnesses who saw Glines’ naked never saw her private parts), a key fact that made the charges particularly unsupportable in court. This sort of fact pattern is very common in such stories, where biased early reports hint that a trans woman did something inappropriate, but subsequent details completely fail to bear that out.
The story from Xenia never garnered wide atention from the US public, which is concerning because of what it represents. A Republican official misused his office to cause completely bogus criminal charges to be brought against an individual trans woman. He was caught bragging about this on video, as reported both in this outlet and the Buckeye Flame. The official, Urshel, has as yet faced no repercussions for the apparent misuse of his position. Not only that, but the trumped-up charges went forward, forcing a trans woman to defend herself in court despite the facts, as is now plain, never having supported anything remotely resembling public indecency.
The campaign to eradicate trans people from public life is already underway, and in full view. Such tactics are exactly what the trans community has been warning about, the way that an unlawful, authoritarian GOP will use the tools already at their disposal to drive trans people underground. Letting stories like this pass without widespread public outrage ensures such tactics will only replicate and grow, and public spaces will grow less and less safe for the small, innocent minority the GOP has chosen to make the target of their culture war.