Alabama Senate Bill 79 (SB79), also known as the What is a Woman Act, is a 2025 law in the U.S. state of Alabama that modifies the definitions of male, female, and related terms in state law to determine gender as based on a person's reproductive organs and whether they produce or would produce sperm or ova. The bill was signed into law by governor Kay Ivey on February 13, 2025, and took effect on October 1, 2025.
The bill has been criticized for being discriminatory towards transgender, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people. During the debate of Senate Bill 79 in the House, debate was restricted to only 10 minutes, which is unusual for controversial legislation in the chamber.
Prior to its passage, a section of the bill which banned people of the opposite sex as determined in state law from using bathrooms aligning with their gender identity was removed. Instead, it was replaced with a section which allows the state and local governments to restrict bathrooms and other spaces to that of sex. No Republicans voted against the bill in the legislature, with some Democrats opposing it.
Senate Bill 79 codifies the definitions of male, female, and other related terms in state law to be tied to that of a person's reproductive organs. It also allows the state to restrict bathrooms, changing rooms, and other generally segregated facilities to be restricted to that of sex as defined in state law, but does not outright restrict the usage of such facilities in the bill itself.
Senate Bill 79 defines two sexes in state law, male and female, and does not include exceptions for intersex people. A person's sex under the bill is determined at birth by a medical professional as either male or female. People who identify as a gender differing from their sex as defined in state law, including transgender people, are referred to in state medical registries as that sex and not by their gender.