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QuickTake:
Lane Transit District officials have curtailed restroom access to passengers at the Springfield station in response to a Trump administration policy. To get access, you need to buy a haircut or taco.
President Donald Trump’s policies have a wide reach — all the way to Lane Transit District’s restrooms in Springfield.
For transit riders, it’s a bit of a mystery. Even a Lane Transit District spokesperson struggled to fully answer questions about the issue.
But a review of public records and a reporter’s assessment of the location show that a Trump policy played a role in shutting down public access to restrooms at the Springfield Transit Station, which had 16,375 passenger arrivals and departures during the first 10 business days of July this year.
First, the basics: At the Springfield Transit Station, a hallway runs from one end of the building to the other. A locked door is on either side of the hallway with a sign notifying passengers that as of June 29, “Restrooms will be closed to the public.”
No further explanation is offered on the sign.
The exterior doors, when unlocked, open into the hallway, which has separate men’s and women’s restrooms, each with its own door.
“On the advice of our counsel, the restrooms at Springfield Station were closed to fully comply with federal policy,” Anni Katz, a spokesperson for Lane Transit District, said in an email to Lookout Eugene-Springfield.
LTD lawyer’s restroom advice is ‘privileged’
Katz declined to answer repeated questions on what, specifically, about the restrooms at the Springfield station has attorneys so worried.
But this much is clear: Transit officials took the matter seriously enough to get attorneys to assess the restroom situation.
“I’ve been told very clearly that that’s privileged,” Katz said when asked to explain what makes the Springfield restrooms unfit for transit use.
A review of the federal policy — and the layout of the Springfield transit station and an adjoining taco restaurant — offer a few clues for passengers wondering what’s up.
First, the policy: A federal memorandum from 2025 for federal agencies and organizations that receive federal funding lays out a variety of guidance to avoid what the Trump administration calls “unlawful discrimination.”
The district, like other transit agencies, relies heavily on federal dollars.
Along with its statement, the Lane Transit District emailed the 2025 federal memorandum to a reporter. One section deals with the “importance of sex-separated intimate spaces and athletic competitions.”
“Compelling employees to share intimate spaces with the opposite sex or allowing men to compete in women’s athletic competitions would typically be unlawful,” the memorandum states.
Those Trump policies and others have drawn criticism for targeting transgender people – those who identify as a gender different from their birth gender.
For the Lane Transit District, the key obstacle to keeping the restrooms open to the public appears to be the federal directive against sharing “intimate spaces with the opposite sex” — in this case, the restroom. That’s because the transit district, to be eligible for federal money, is required to provide assurances that it will follow federal policies.
On its face, the federal directive also runs contrary to Oregon’s general approach to such issues. In recent years, Democratic governors and legislators have been more inclusive of allowing people to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identification. In 2019, for example, then-Gov. Kate Brown issued an executive order for state agencies to “permit persons to use restrooms and other gender-designated facilities consistent with their gender identity.”
When pressed, Katz also pointed to Oregon law prohibiting discrimination in a place of public accommodation regardless of race, color, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity.
This means that under Oregon law, a person can access either the men’s or women’s restrooms based on their gender identity, not their birth gender.
However, that runs contrary to the Trump administration’s directive, which restricts restroom usage that way, which would make LTD out of compliance.
A reporter’s trip to Springfield Transit Station
So what’s become of the restrooms in Springfield?
In the absence of detailed answers, a reporter made his way to the Springfield Transit Station. Like at any other transit station, its buses keep running and passengers come and go — perhaps leaving a bit sooner without a restroom to access.
The signs block access to the restrooms. But for passengers in need of a restroom, there’s a solution: Buy a taco or haircut.
The transit station’s building includes a couple of private businesses: a barber shop and a Mexican restaurant, Los Faroles.
A Lookout reporter purchased a couple of lengua street tacos and inquired about restroom access. A friendly clerk handed over an electronic key to access the hallway of the restroom that’s now off-limits.
Well, off-limits only to unfortunate transit riders at least — unless they also happen to be customers of the businesses in the building.
The electronic key has LTD’s green logo with the notation: “contractor access.”
For the record, the men’s room, at least, is kept in good order.
Two urinals are side-by-side and don’t have any privacy wall between – perhaps a contributing reason for the attorneys’ privileged reasons for concern.
For those who prefer privacy in the privy, there’s a walled-off toilet stall.
Meanwhile, in Eugene
For riders wondering about the Eugene Transit Station, the outlook is better.
The station has all-user gender-neutral stalls – one toilet per person – that remain open because they are not shared spaces among different genders. And they also are open to all genders, meeting the requirements of Oregon law and federal policy.
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