Each year since 2020, Republicans have introduced a record amount of state bills attempting to roll back queer and transgender rights. Though LGBTQ+ advocates defeat the majority of them, preventing them from becoming law, the volume of bills continues to become more broad and more extreme as politicians try to enforce a binary definition of gender, according to
Them.
Five hundred and seventy-five anti-LGBTQ+ state bills have been introduced already this year with 54 passing into law and 105 failing, the majority of them targeting transgender people.
The Anti-Trans Laws
Anti-trans laws are evolving, becoming more explicit in trying to define gender based on birth characteristics through the dog whistle of protecting women’s spaces. Fifteen states define sex as reproductive anatomy, chromosomes, or hormones with five going into effect this year. These laws exclude anyone that doesn’t fit the binary from nondiscrimination protections. The laws also have potential to support discrimination toward women who don’t fit into traditional gender roles.
Nineteen states ban transgender folks from using bathrooms that match their identity in government-owned buildings including K-12 schools, as reported by the
Movement Advancement Project, an organization that tracks LGBTQ+ policy. Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming have passed these laws to include libraries, museums, and colleges.
Over time, anti-trans bills that make it into law are becoming more severe, Logan Casey, director of policy research at the Movement Advancement Project explains. “Especially now with the Trump administration signaling very strongly, throughout the campaign and since inauguration, that attacking transgender people is one of their top priorities, it’s no surprise to me that state elect-eds continue prioritizing this in their own efforts,”
The Historical Bills
There are many notable bills and firsts being passed this year. Iowa is the first state in the country to
completely strip nondiscrimination protections for trans people. The Iowa Civil Rights Act previously protected trans people since 2007 with many Republican lawmakers at the time endorsing it. The new law bans updates to gender markers on birth certificates and bans schools from teaching students about LGBTQ+ identities before seventh grade.
“It’s escalated from things like the ‘don’t say gay, don’t say trans’ stuff and the book bans all the way up to removing an entire class of people from the Civil Rights Act,” Keenan Crow, director of policy and advocacy at One Iowa, a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, says. “When I started this job almost 12 years ago, I was really proud of our state. We were one of the first states to add gender identity as a protected class. We were the third state for marriage equality. I wouldn’t anymore recommend that trans folks move here because their rights are being eroded, literally, as we speak.
It’s not just trans people and LGBTQ+ minorities being targeted. Cis individuals within the community must stand with their trans siblings and not be complacent towards laws that they think may not effect them, because Republican state lawmakers are also coming for marriage equality. Six states have introduced bills to the Supreme Court trying to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, according to the New York Times.
The Resistance
Georgia Democrats organized a mass walkout in April in response to a bill that would ban state spending on gender-affirming care for trans prisoners, according to
Them. At a time when many lawmakers and agencies have submitted to President Donald Trump’s bullying tactics, Governor Janet Mills of Maine challenged his executive order, threatening federal funding for school that allow trans individuals to play on the sports teams that match their gender.
After Trump personally threatened to cut the state’s funding if Maine didn’t comply, Governor Mills told him in a White House meeting, “We’ll see you in court.”
There have been some Republicans that have opposed anti-trans policies. Montana considered a bill to allow private citizens to sue drag performers and another bill that would allow the state to remove trans kids from their parents’ custody if they transitioned. Enough Republicans flipped their votes for both bills in order for them not to pass.
Some Democrats, however, have begun to cede. In Pennsylvania, Democrats voted in support of a bill to ban trans girls and women from girls’ sports in kindergarten through college. Their votes reflect a small but growing number of Democratic lawmakers voting against trans rights, according to Them.
“With these extreme bills that are being proposed, trans people and our allies are standing up and stepping up and saying, we won’t be erased. We will still be visible, regardless of these proposed bills,” Joelle Bayaa-Uzuri Espeut of the Normal Anomaly Initiative, one of the nation’s leading Black LGBTQ+ nonprofits, says.
“We’re being threatened just by making our identity a felony. Visibility is key. Visibility is an act of revolution. It’s an act of resistance,” she adds. “It is showing that they are not going to win.”
Photos courtesy DEPOS 
