User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Virginia

Public toilets in Virginia, commonly called washrooms, are found at a rate of around seven public toilets per 100,000 people. Racial segregation policies impacted public toilets.

Public toilets
washroom is one of the most commonly used words for public toilet in the United States. Euphemisms are often used to avoid discussing the purpose of toilets. Words used include toilet, restroom, bathroom, lavatory and john.

A 2021 study found there were seven public toilets per 100,000 people.

Public toilets are often located in semi-private public accommodations like hotels, stores, restaurants and coffee shops instead of being street level municipal maintained facilities.

History
There was a push back against building public toilets in Jim Crow states during the period between 1865 and 1960, because it meant that local governments were not just required to build two toilets, one for men and one for women, but four toilets, one each for men and women who were white and who were colored. Racially segregated public toilets were very common in the 1960s.

Railway stations began building big terminals in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. One of their features were big public toilet facilities. Train station designer Walter G. Berg said in his 1893 that public toilet facilities should be used to keep undesirable elements out. In the South, this included colored people.

Because Prohibition saw an increase in the construction of public toilets to address the new found demand, many municipalities located outside the South built sex-segregated public toilets that were essentially the same construction inside, with the same number of stalls and layout for each. In the South, public toilet facilities tended to have four toilet sections that reinforced racial segregation, one for white women, one for white men, one for colored men and one for colored women.

Gavin Grimm filed a lawsuit challenging Gloucester County School Board's rule that said students must use the public toilet that matches with their sex and not their gender identity or use a single occupancy toilet in 2016. The case saw an appeals court decided that the rule was in violation of Title IX. An earlier court had said it was not a violation. An appeal was made to the Supreme Court decided in June 2021 not to look at the case, and instead left in place the 2020 Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said it was a Title IX violation. Failure to take the case, with Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito indicating they would have liked to, meant that the decision was only applicable to Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia whose jurisdiction is covered by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.