After a year of campaigning in which Republicans portrayed Democrats as deeply out of step with the mainstream on transgender issues, Republican state lawmakers across the country have filed dozens of proposals aimed at limiting the measure in which trans people can be recognized based on their gender identity. .
The flood of proposed bills goes beyond limits imposed by states in recent years on sports participation and medical treatment for transgender minors. This year’s proposals cover a broader set of restrictions, or increase existing ones, in a wider range of states.
Several bills aim to expand regulations on trans youth to also apply to adults. Others would insert definitions into state codes limiting legal recognition of a person’s sex to their sex on their original birth certificate. Others would prohibit public schools from including the concept of gender identity in classroom discussions.
Many social conservatives said they viewed the election results, after Republicans portrayed Democrats as too permissive on issues of treating gender transition and trans athletes, as a mandate to limit recognition of transgender identity at the state level.
Republicans were able to put transgender issues “at the heart of this victory,” said May Mailman, director of the Independent Women’s Law Center, a conservative legal group, because “most Americans know that some gender differences are significant”. Given Republican gains in November, Ms. Mailman said she hoped Democrats would see that “bills like this are not controversial.”
Transgender advocates said they have seen no strong evidence linking Republican victories in last fall’s election to campaign messaging on trans issues. They said they saw Republican lawmakers as promoting the agenda of national conservative groups on gender at the expense of more pressing local concerns, such as high housing and health care costs.
“Republicans continue to manufacture outraged and dehumanizing rhetoric against the transgender community because they think they will gain political advantage from it,” said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, an advocacy group LGBTQ.
There are about three million transgender adults in this country, according to an estimate by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, which studies the LGBTQ population. A recent government survey of high school students found that about 3 percent identify as transgender.
In states across the country, legislative sessions are beginning at a time when some signs suggest a cultural shift toward less acceptance of trans people, advocates on both sides of the issue say.
In recent weeks, Pixar, a division of Walt Disney Studios, removed a transgender storyline from an animated series that was scheduled to begin airing in February. Congressional Republicans have implemented a new rule so that Rep. Sarah McBride, the first openly trans person elected to Congress, cannot use the women’s restroom at the Capitol. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, announced that the company would no longer ban Facebook, Instagram and Threads users from posting claims that transgender people suffer from mental illnesses, because such restrictions were “disconnected from mainstream discourse.” .
While many state Democrats say they continue to support transgender rights, some Democrats have recently come out in favor of limits.
“Men should not participate in women’s sports,” Paul Sarlo, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, said in an interview on PBS. “I think if we spoke a little more frankly, if we had a little more practical common sense, we could have done better in the election.”
More than 250 bills proposing restrictions on LGBTQ people have been introduced in chambers across the country, according to a list compiled by Erin Reed, a transgender rights advocate and journalist who tracks the legislation. On Substack, Ms. Reed described the wave of legislation as “another historic wave of legal attacks on transgender people’s ability to move, live, and exist freely as themselves in public.”
Republican lawmakers say they want to preserve privacy in restrooms and locker rooms, as well as fairness for women in sports. More generally, they say they want to counter what they call “gender ideology” – a growing deference to gender nonconformity in education, medicine and government documents – which they see as undermining idea that there are important and immutable differences between men and women.
The proposals being considered in Republican-controlled state legislatures would touch many areas of daily life: medical treatments, clothing and makeup, public restrooms, sports participation, classroom discussions and school curriculum.
In Texas, a bill would prohibit state funds from covering gender transition treatment for state employees and Medicaid recipients, regardless of age. In South Carolina, a proposal would prevent people in transition from updating their birth certificates. In Montana, a bill would require people living in public facilities to use bathrooms of the gender identified at birth.
If adopted, some measures risk being subject to legal challenges. A Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of a Tennessee ban on gender transition treatment for minors, expected in June, will have implications for similar bans in 23 other states. But the court also plans to hear appeals from West Virginia and Idaho after federal appeals courts sided with trans athletes challenging sports bans in those states.
Several states will be closely monitored. Kansas lawmakers have twice failed to override Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat,’s veto of a ban on gender transition care for minors, but say they plan to try again. Proposals to ban trans athletes have been filed in Georgia and Nebraska, the only two states with full Republican control of the states that have yet to enact such legislation.
Separately, Republican leaders in Washington, D.C., are considering tackling some of the same issues at the national level, but conservative supporters say states may be the easiest route for such measures.
“We’ve found that these concerns about privacy, safety and parental rights really resonate with people,” said Matt Sharp, senior attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative religious legal group that has worked with lawmakers in Idaho on what became the nation’s first ban on trans athletes in 2007. 2020. “This should be a question that every state looks at and asks, ‘What can we do?’ » »
Some states are responding to this question by expanding existing restrictions. A Wyoming bill proposes adding elementary school students to a 2023 law that bans trans girls in middle and high schools from participating in girls-only sports. And Indiana lawmakers are considering extending restrictions on young trans athletes through college.
About 40 of the several hundred bills targeting the LGBTQ population last year passed, according to the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for LGBTQ rights. Yet even when measures fail, ongoing debates over the legitimacy of trans identities have harmful consequences, LGBTQ rights advocates say.
“I want to live my life, not fight for my rights,” said Allison Montgomery, a software engineer and member of the Alabama Transgender Rights Action Coalition, which opposes a proposal in Alabama to ban drag shows in libraries in the presence of minors.
During a three-hour Montana House Judiciary Committee hearing last week on the bill that would regulate the use of restrooms in government buildings, Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe said she was sponsoring the bill. law to protect women. Under the proposal, anyone who encounters a person of the opposite sex in a restroom or locker room in a public building can sue for damages.
Asked by a committee member whether implementing the measure would require cameras or birth certificate checks for everyone using public restrooms, Seekins-Crowe said the bill’s goal was “not to invade privacy”.
“It’s not targeting a certain population,” she said.
The bill passed out of committee earlier this week.
