AUSTIN, Texas -- A "bathroom bill" focusing on transgender people passed in the Texas Senate on Tuesday despite opposition from police and major corporations.
It is the second time this year that Texas has tried to put restrictions on which restrooms transgender people can use, but the same deep GOP divisions that sank the first try remain.
At stake for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott -- who faces re-election in 2018 -- is whether his party will deliver after he ordered them to finish the job in a special legislative session that ends in August.
Businesses and police have urged Abbott to drop the bill. Just as the bill came to floor inside the Senate, police chiefs and commanders from Texas' largest cities stood outside on the Capitol steps and railed against the effort as a waste of time.
Nearly nine hours later, the bill passed 21-10 after Democrats dragged out the vote. State troopers removed a few protesters in the mostly empty Senate gallery who shouted "This is a farce!" and unfurled a banner that read "Y'all means all."
"It's about privacy and protection," Republican state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst said. She said her bill would stop a man from "saying today I feel like a female and I have the right to go into these intimate spaces."
The bill would require people to use the public restroom that matches the sex on their birth certificate, including in public schools.
It now moves to the House, where the original Senate version died earlier this year without a vote.
The bill has split the Texas GOP between moderates who stand with high-profile opponents -- including Apple and the NFL -- and social conservatives who drive the state's political agenda.
Before the vote, Abbott released a statement touting "growing support" and listed endorsements from five socially conservative groups.
Kolkhorst, upon bringing the measure to the floor, called the bill an "opportunity to shut down predators and voyeurs." Police chiefs and top commanders from the four biggest cities in Texas -- Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin -- said before the vote that they had not found examples of restroom-related sexual assaults and argued that the bill would make Texas more, not less, dangerous.
"Folks will feel emboldened, they will feel that they can discriminate, they can target and they will feel they can have vigilante justice out there because of this law," Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said. "Please don't put another handcuff, another burden on the overburdened law enforcement community in the state of Texas."
The bill marks the second time this year that police leaders from Texas' biggest cities, which are also some of the largest in the U.S., are at odds with a marquee piece of Republican legislation. The same chiefs unsuccessfully pushed against a "sanctuary cities" ban signed by Abbott in May that lets police ask people during routine stops whether they're in the U.S. legally.
On Monday, police in Austin filed court documents alleging that a Texas transgender activist beaten in a carjacking was targeted because of her gender identity. Two brothers were charged in that case, accused of beating and pulling a gun on Stephanie Martinez before stealing her car last week.
Court documents show that one of the suspects told police that they targeted Martinez because she was transgender. The day after the attack, Martinez was among hundreds who packed the Capitol to testify against the bill before a Senate committee.
The Texas House eventually approved a weakened version applying only to public schools, which the Senate rejected. Abbott called a special session to revive the bill and 19 other pieces of conservative legislation.
Information for this article was contributed by Will Weissert of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/26/2017