If you need to use a bathroom inside a D.C. business, a new bill introduced by Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto wants you to show some ID first.

Pinto, the council’s newest and youngest member, introduced legislation this week that would allow D.C. Health to issue an identification card to pregnant individuals and those with inflammatory bowel disease, allowing them to gain access to toilets in retail spaces and restaurants that prohibit non-customers from using their facilities. Councilmembers Brianne Nadeau, Brandon Todd, Charles Allen, and Vincent Gray have co-sponsored the bill.

In addition to the permit, which users would need to be signed by a physician, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant, the act outlines a few more criteria for access. A minimum of three employees or owners of a business must be working at the time an individual needs bathroom access, and the toilet must not be located in an area that would “create an obvious health or safety risk” to the individual or other guests and employees.

Pinto says she still needs to iron out details of implementation with D.C. Health, but as long as a medical provider signs off on the ID card, businesses will have to accept them. For pregnant individuals, she says the cards will likely work for the duration of the pregnancy, plus several months postpartum.

While the legislation was met with a fair amount of criticism, surprise, and the to-be-expected poop jokes on Twitter (online takedowns are par for the course in Pinto’s increasingly intense reelection bid), it’s not a new idea. Several states across the country have enacted Ally’s Law (or the Restroom Access Act) under the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, which requires retail establishments to permit individuals with certain medical conditions like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis to use their restrooms. “I Can’t Wait” cards are often issued from the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation and recognized throughout the country. According to Pinto, she and her office looked to similar legislation adopted by other states when drafting her own bill.

In D.C., where Ally’s Law is not in place, restroom access has long been an issue for residents—most devastatingly for those experiencing homelessness. In 2018, thanks to lobbying by The People For Fairness Coalition’s Downtown DC Public Restroom Initiative, the D.C. Council passed legislation that created two pilot programs: One sought to install two public restrooms in D.C., and another planned to create incentives for private businesses to open their restrooms to the public. Funded in the 2020 city budget, the restrooms are slated to open somewhere downtown by the middle of next year.

Marcia Bernbaum, a mentor and advisor with the Downtown DC Public Restroom Initiative, tweeted the coalition’s support of Pinto’s bill on Thursday. According to Bernbaum, the second part of the pilot, which was intended to financially encourage businesses to open their restrooms, has yet to get off the ground due to the pandemic. She considers Pinto’s bill a next-best-step in bathroom access.

“In principle, we support it because that’s exactly what we’re doing, is trying to make clean, safe, public restrooms open to everybody, including people with those conditions,” Bernbaum says. “It’s a nice compliment [to our work] and I’ll be eager to get in touch with her staff and learn more about it and how we can collaborate together.”

Bernbaum says she’s curious to see how the act would work logistically if passed, and how businesses would respond. Previous PFFC research found that, over the past several years, D.C. businesses are increasingly restricting restroom access to people who aren’t customers, as well as discriminating against individuals experiencing homelessness in particular. Some critics of the legislation drew out this issue, suggesting that creating more hoops to jump through—like securing a government-issued card—would actually reduce bathroom access.

D.C. resident Marc Friend is a volunteer with the Downtown DC Public Restroom Initiative and has an “I Can’t Wait” card issued through the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation for his ulcerative colitis. Even though no businesses are legally bound to respect it in D.C., Friend says establishments respect his needs 90 percent of the time. However, in his work with the coalition, he sees the inequity in access for D.C.’s unhoused residents.

“As a white male, it is a lot easier for me to go into any establishments,” Friend says. “And as somebody who is not experiencing homelessness, it’s also the privilege that I have that makes [that] access much easier.”

Pinto says that she fully supports the 2018 legislation to create more public restrooms for Washingtonians experiencing homelessness, and is working on securing more funding to expand these restrooms in the city. But she says the bill she’s proposing now is an “immediate” solution for residents living with severe stomach issues, adding that many of the businesses she’s spoken with are willing to comply.

“It was important to us to ameliorate that immediate need right now, to ensure that nobody is ever turned away from using a restroom, particularly when they have underlying medical conditions, which we know about affect people’s ability to live their day,” Pinto says.

This post was updated to correct that the bill will apply to individuals with inflammatory bowel disease.