US Republican politician Lauren Boebert has admitted she made a mistake when she challenged a woman about her gender in the bathroom of the US capital building, accidently mistaking a stranger as transgender politician Sarah McBride.
Last year Sarah McBride from Delaware became the first transgender woman to be elected to congress. As she arrived to take up her role, the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson ordered that everyone in the government building needed to use the public bathroom that matched their gender at birth.
This week it seems Boebert thought she’d caught McBride using the female bathroom. An unnamed politician has told The Daily Beast about the embarrassing mix-up. The woman approached and challenged by Boebert was neither McBride, or a transgender woman.
The story has also been confirmed by a reporter at Bloomberg who overheard Boebert making her apology for the error.
“I made an error regarding a mistaken identity. I apologised, learned a lesson, and it won’t happen again,” Boebert said in a statement.
McBride has previously said that while she does not agree with the speaker’s bathroom policy, she will abide by it.
Boebert has previously claimed that US children are identifying as cats and universities offer degrees in Lesbian Dance Theory, neither claim was true.
The case is one of a growing number of time cis-gendered women have been challenged on their bathroom choice. Last year athlete Lindsay Walter shared her experience of encountering the bathroom police in a US airport.