Trans woman shares personal account of conflict with lawmaker outside Capitol restroom

By Leigh Searcy

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    FRANKFORT, Kentucky (WLEX) — Last Thursday was just another day at the state capitol for Carma Bell Marshall, a transgender woman from Louisville, who was preparing to speak at an event.

“I went into the restroom and applied my lipstick and eyelashes, and turned around to leave the bathroom and there was a capitol officer who was motioning for me,” Marshall said.

Outside the women’s restroom, Marshall said she saw Rep. Bill Wesley surrounded by several capitol police officers.

“The representative addressed me, asked me what I was doing in there and I told him I was just getting ready in there to go speak — nothing too crazy, too malicious, nefarious — just wanted to make sure I was together,” Marshall stated, who said Wesley then called her a male and told her she didn’t belong in there.

Marshall, who advocates for transgender Kentuckians, eventually walked away from Wesley.

“I kept trying to de-escalate the situation because I didn’t understand why he was so aggressive,” said Marshall. “I told him I was a trans woman, and I belong in that bathroom just as any other female and he just wasn’t having it.”

Wesley, a Republican representative and pastor from Ravenna, recounted the confrontation on the social media platform X, claiming, “A far-left Democratic senator slapped me after I kept a man pretending to be a woman out of the girl’s bathroom in the Kentucky Capitol.”

In a video posted on X, Wesley identified Sen. Karen Berg of Louisville as the lawmaker involved in the altercation. Berg denied physically assaulting Wesley. Marshall, who is also the co-chair of the Trans Wellness Coalition of Louisville, says she’ll continue fighting for transgender rights and using the women’s restroom at the state capitol.

“I don’t know if he’s ever met transgender Kentuckians but there’s plenty of us out there,” said Marshall. “We’d love to have a conversation and sit down with him in an amicable setting.”

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