Using a urinal in a public restroom with an open view to others – whether legitimately in the lavatory or possibly there as a spectator – may soon be one less problem making men’s bladders blush.
Concurrent House Resolution 4, sponsored by Rep. Mickey Guillory, D-Eunice, urges the Department of Health and Hospitals to amend the plumbing section of the state sanitary code to “require privacy partitions between urinals in male restrooms.”
The resolution only requests for the code to be amended at the Legislature’s direction because a resolution is only a recommendation to other government agencies and not a binding law such as a bill.
It will be up to state health officials to decide if they will follow the legislative measure which passed in the State House on April 14 with 98 yeas and zero nays. The resolution passed in the Senate with 34 yeas and zero nays on April 15. It was signed by the Speaker of the House on April 16.
The resolution suggests adding privacy partitions between urinals will “protect the health and safety of users, including our children” from “sexual offenders, sexually violent predators and child predators,” who “have been known to frequent public restrooms seeking to violate the privacy of our children and others, thereby stripping them oftheir innocence.”
The privacy partitions will begin at a hight no more than 12 inches from the ground and extend no less than 60 inches from the floor. The partitions must extend from the wall at least 18 inches outward or to a point not less than six inches from the outermost front lip of the urinal, whichever distance is greater.
The resolution does not require partitions “where wall-hung trough urinals are currently allowed in stadiums.” These trough-style urinals are found in Tiger Stadium.
Partitions would be required only in buildings being built or buildings undergoing reconstruction where the total work area exceeds 50 percent of the total building’s area, therefore not affecting most of the University campus.