Dear Littler: Our retail clothing chain has stores in 10 major cities across the country. We recently had an issue in our Seattle, Washington location. A customer claiming to have a medical condition wanted to use our private employee restroom. The store manager did not feel comfortable with this, as the restroom is employee-only near the breakroom. We’re short-staffed as it is, so there were no employees to spare to show the customer where the restroom was, let alone ensure he did not wander to other areas. He left in a huff and claimed this was against the law. Is he right?

—Free Rein in Retail

Dear Free Rein,

As with so many issues—it depends. At least 19 states¹ and the District of Columbia have passed Restroom Access Laws requiring retail establishments to allow individuals with specific medical conditions to use employee restrooms under certain conditions. The first Restroom Access Law, also known as Ally’s Law, was enacted in Illinois in 2005 in response to an incident involving a 14-year-old who had Crohn’s disease, and was denied access to a department store’s employee restroom when no public facilities were available. Illinois’ law has become a model for Restroom Access Laws in other states, though some of the provisions of each state’s law are slightly different.

Washington is one of the states with a Retail Restroom Access Law, which provides that a retail store customer, defined as a person who is “lawfully on the premises of a retail establishment” with an...

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