Fewer than three months into 2022, the year in American politics has already been characterized by a deluge of anti-transgender legislation in states across the country.
And although some of these bills and executive actions, like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill or Texas’s horrifying attacks on the parents of trans youth, have gotten national attention, there are far more that are managing to slip under the radar, from bans on LGBTQ+ books in libraries to bills that would make it a crime to leave a state in pursuit of trans-affirming healthcare.
Speaking on Democracy Now! on Wednesday, Chase Strangio, the Deputy Director for Transgender Justice at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that such laws will have “catastrophic” consequences for trans people nationwide.
“The only way you can stop us from being who we are is by killing us,” Strangio said bluntly, “and that, unfortunately, is starting to feel like the actual objective of these bills.”
We know that keeping up with the latest developments is exhausting and confusing, so we’ve compiled the week’s major legal developments state-by-state for you below.
After passing through the state House of Representatives last week, the Florida Senate on Tuesday voted in favor of HB 1557, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by LGBTQ+ activists. The bill, which would prevent teachers from discussing LGBTQ+ identities in classrooms up to the third grade and give parents unheard-of oversight on student mental health counseling, now heads to Governor Ron DeSantis’ desk, who is expected to sign it into law.
The Idaho House passed HB 675, which would make it a felony for doctors or parents to give hormones or puberty blockers to trans minors or to leave the state in search of such care, reclassifying treatment as “mutilation” with a maximum sentence of life in prison. The bill now heads to the Senate, where it was referred to the State Affairs committee. (The bill makes a special allowance for non-consensual surgeries performed on intersex minors.)
With luck, though, that might be the furthest it advances. On a press call Wednesday, Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Winder, a Republican, said there are “pretty low odds” HB 675 will move forward, as KTVB reported. Winder called such bills “mischief” and intimated that more bills than usual are being “put in drawers” — i.e., being killed in committee — in the state Senate right now.
Last week, Governor Kim Reynolds signed HF 2416 into law, prohibiting trans students from participating in academic sports programs that match their gender. While the law was worded to also push trans men into “female” sports teams, Reynolds and the bill’s sponsors have repeatedly framed it as a law to “protect women’s sports” from “biological males” who pose an alleged unfair advantage to cis women. Response to the passage has been mixed, with the Iowa City City Council released a statement condemning the law’s “discrimination,” while a Des Moines Register poll found that Iowans were evenly split in their opinion on the law.
As of March 4, Rep. Gabe Firment had introduced HB 570, officially titled the “Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act,” and referred it to the House Health & Welfare committee. Much like Idaho’s HB 675, the bill would prevent medical professionals from providing transition-related care to trans minors, or from referring patients to another doctor to receive such care, claiming that “[t]he risks of gender transition procedures far outweigh any benefit.”
The bill would also follow in the footsteps of “Don’t Say Gay,” requiring teachers to inform parents if a student expresses a trans identity to them, and prohibiting school staff from “encouraging or coercing” a minor to keep such information a secret, even if the parent or guardian is obviously unaccepting or intolerant.
Indiana’s HB 1041, another ban on trans girls’ participation in school sports, passed in the Senate earlier this month; on Monday, it was signed by the Senate President Pro Tempore, Rodric Bray. It now heads to Republican Governor Eric Holcomb’s desk, who previously expressed support for the bill, saying “anything that encourages parental engagement in the education of their students in our state’s future is a good thing.”
Most of the language in HB 1041 is similar or identical to Iowa’s HF 2416, but with a key difference: while both bills mandate that teams be designated for boys, girls, or co-ed based on birth-assigned sex, 1041 technically only prohibits “male” students (again, based on sex assigned at birth) from participating on a “female” team, although trans boys in sports would likely not be immune from consequences should the bill pass into law.
Much like Indiana’s HB 1041, the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” SB 781, would specifically prohibit trans women and girls from participating in any “athletic team or sport designated for females, women, or girls.” On Tuesday, the Missouri Senate Education Committee voted to approve the bill as written, sending it to a floor vote.
Twin bills HB 23 and SB 83, the “Fairness in Womens' Sports Act” and “Save Women’s Sports Act” respectively, are currently pending in the legislature. Both bills would require sports teams to be divided by “biological sex” and specifically prohibit “male” students from joining “girls’” teams; HB 23 was sent to a floor vote scheduled for Thursday, while SB 83 was referred to the House Education Committee on Tuesday.
A whopping 45 legislators have signed on as co-sponsors of HB 322, which would require “every multiple occupancy restroom or changing area designated for students” in K-12 schools to be segregated based on “biological sex.” After passing the House last month, this “bathroom bill” is now under consideration in the Senate committee on Governmental Affairs.
There’s so much happening in Tennessee right now, it’s hard even for professionals to keep it all straight, with numerous bills (some identical and introduced simultaneously in both legislative chambers) all in various stages of the legislative process. Most pressingly, on March 16 the Senate Education Committee is scheduled to consider SB 2777 (which would give teachers legal protection to openly misgender trans students), SB 2153 (another bill barring “males” from women’s sports teams), and SB 1861 (which would require schools to confirm student athletes’ “biological sex” and remove funding from schools that refuse to do so).
Other bills under consideration include HB 2835, a close mirror of Louisiana’s HB 570, which would establish a $1000 civil fine for each instance of a doctor providing hormones or puberty blockers to a minor; it’s currently scheduled to be heard by the House Subcommittee on Health on March 15.
On Wednesday, the Arizona House’s Judiciary Committee voted to approve two anti-trans bills: SB 1165, which prohibits “males” from joining “female” teams but allows anyone to join a team designated for “males”; and SB 1138, which outlaws hormones, puberty blockers, and gender-affirming surgeries for trans minors, while still leaving room for surgeons to operate on intersex infants. Both bills will now proceed to the full House.
On Wednesday, Alaska’s own trans sports ban SB 140 (due for its second hearing on March 12) got two new co-sponsors, including Republican Rep. Lora Reinbold, who made headlines last year after her refusal to wear masks got her removed from committee appointments and banned from most of the state Capitol building (as well as Alaska Airlines, causing her to miss the final legislative session of 2021). We’re sure the other sponsors are thrilled to stand with such, uh, auspicious company.
Thankfully, not all anti-trans bills are advancing in their assorted state legislatures. Missouri’s HB 1099, the horrendously-named “Real You Act,” which would have prohibited incarcerated people from changing their names and minors from requesting legal recognition of a change in gender, died in the Senate this week, as did a New Hampshire bill intent on protecting the state’s “rational interest in recognizing the male and female sexes.”
But this list is still horrifyingly long, and represents a dedicated conservative effort across the country to oppose and erase trans rights however they can. Defeating these bills and overturning those that pass will require months, more likely years, of dedicated work by legal advocates — and civil disobedience by our allies — squaring off against those who want to legislate the trans community to death.
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