A Republican-led committee on Thursday killed a bill that sought to bar transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice.

The House General Laws subcommittee, which includes five Republicans and two Democrats, tabled the bill without debate with a voice vote after hearing testimony from a handful of witnesses, The Washington Post reported.

The bill's author, Robert G. Marshall, a Republican from Prince William, criticized committee members for killing his proposal, calling them “disgusting” cowards.

“You campaign one way and come down here and kill things silently,” he fumed.

Going into Thursday's hearing, Marshall tweaked his bill to allow transgender people who had undergone sex-reassignment therapy or surgery and whose birth certificates had been changed to reflect that to use the bathroom of their choice.

“If someone goes through the process of changing their sex – I don't think it's very smart because such people have very high rates of self-harm. That's documented, not from me,” he said. “But if they go through that, fine. Let them use that bathroom.”

Known as the Physical Privacy Act, the bill would also require public school principals to notify a parent or guardian if a child outs himself or herself as transgender, which could include the child requesting to be recognized as the opposite sex, to be addressed by a name or pronoun inconsistent with his or her sex, or to use a restroom designated for the opposite sex of the child.

Marshall's bill has been compared to North Carolina's controversial House Bill 2, which not only prohibited transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice in many buildings, but also blocked cities and municipalities from enacting LGBT protections. But unlike North Carolina's law, Marshall's proposal includes an enforcement provision that would allow a person to sue for physical or emotional distress caused by a transgender person using the facility he or she identifies with.

Marshall and Senator Stephen Newman are the co-authors of the state's voter-approved constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. Fifty-seven percent of Virginia voters in 2006 approved the Marshall-Newman Amendment. A federal judge in 2014 struck down the amendment as unconstitutional. The following year, the Supreme Court, in a related case, found that gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to marry.

Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe has vowed to veto the bill if it reaches his desk.

(Related: Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe signs order banning LGBT discrimination among contractors.)