SITUATION:
Starting in late 2021, a claim spread across social media and local school board meetings: districts were installing litter boxes in bathrooms for students who “identify as cats” or as furries. The story jumped from a Michigan school board comment to national politics within months.
By the 2022 midterms, at least 20 Republican candidates and elected officials had repeated some version of the claim, according to an NBC News review. That list included Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Lauren Boebert, Senate candidate Don Bolduc, and gubernatorial candidates Scott Jensen and Heidi Ganahl.
Podcast host Joe Rogan discussed the claim as fact on his show in October 2022. One America News Network aired the claim again in January 2023, with host Dan Ball citing an unverified story about a girl “near my hometown in Ohio.”
Every school district named in these claims issued public denials. Superintendents in Michigan, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Oregon each stated on the record that no litter boxes existed in their buildings.
THE TRUTH:
Fact-checking organizations including Snopes, PolitiFact, Reuters, and the Associated Press investigated the claim repeatedly between 2022 and 2023. None found a single documented case of a school providing a litter box for a student who identified as an animal.
Some of the politicians who spread the claim later admitted they had not checked it first. Iowa state senator Tim Kraayenbrink told a local paper he “didn’t verify the claim was true” before repeating it at a public forum. Nebraska senator Bruce Bostelman retracted his version of the story within hours of making it.
There is one real, unrelated story behind the rumor. Some Colorado school districts keep buckets with cat litter as part of emergency lockdown kits, so students can relieve themselves if trapped in a classroom for hours during an active shooter situation. That supply list detail bears no connection to gender identity policy.
Researchers who study the furry fandom, a hobby built around animal-character avatars distinct from transgender identity, say the claim conflates two unrelated groups entirely. No furry convention or community organization has ever called for litter box accommodations in schools.
WHY IT MATTERS:
A false story that gets repeated by more than 20 elected officials and amplified by a national television network is not a fringe rumor anymore. It becomes something voters reasonably expect their representatives to have checked before repeating from a podium.
When politicians admit afterward that they never verified the claim, as two state senators did, the damage to their credibility does not stay contained to one story. Voters who later learn the truth have reason to wonder what else went unchecked.
Media outlets carry the same responsibility. OAN aired the claim as fact more than a year after it had already been debunked by fact-checkers across the political spectrum, including conservative-leaning outlets. Airing a story after it has been publicly refuted is a choice, not an accident.
Conservatives who value accountability in institutions should hold their own side to that same standard first. A movement built on demanding the truth from schools, government, and media loses its footing the moment it stops demanding the truth from itself.
SOURCES:
- NBC News, “How an urban myth about litter boxes in schools became a GOP talking point,” October 14, 2022
- PolitiFact, “Ahead of the midterm election, conservative candidates and pundits continued to repeat the false claim,” December 15, 2022
- Snopes, “Did a Michigan School District Install Litter Boxes in Bathrooms?”
- Snopes, “How Furries Got Swept Up in Anti-Trans ‘Litter Box’ Rumors,” January 30, 2023
- Education Week, “Litter Boxes in Schools: How a Disruptive and Demeaning Hoax Frustrated School Leaders,” November 2022
- Wikipedia, “Litter boxes in schools hoax”
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