Arizona Republicans Push Back on Anti-LGBTQ Bills

Following last year’s massive influx of anti-LGBTQ bills across the country, republicans in Arizona introduced 17 anti-LGBTQ bills at the start of this year’s legislative sessions. However, the GOP has taken a stance against some of those bills.

Out of the 17 such bills, including 12 that explicitly target transgender people, republicans pushed back against a number of such initiatives.

The Arizona state legislature’s Health and Human Services committee failed to approve SB 1138, a bill which would have prohibited doctors from delivering transition-related care to anyones under the age of 18. Republican State Senator Tyler Pace veered away from GOP-majority committee to split the votes 4-4-0, effectively killing the legislation’s forward progress, according to The 19th.

“The testimonies we heard today about the many people who are using these avenues of medical treatments to save lives, to improve lives,” he said during the committee hearing, “I don’t want my vote to stop those great things.” He declined to comment further, a spokesperson indicated.

“When you meet our kids and you see them and you meet our community, a lot of those biases that people carry are dispelled, because we’re just families trying to do the right thing,” Lizette Trujillo tells NBC News. Trujillo’s 14-year-old transgender son testified about such care before lawmakers. “I think that Senator Pace saw that in that moment.”

A bathroom bill and legislation that would block state identification documents from ever using nonbinary gender markers also failed, after republican House Speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers broke away from the rest of his party and voted against it. 

The Human Rights Campaign’s Arizona state director, Bridget Sharpe, and the rest of the HRC branch in the state are currently focused on countering the state’s bills to ban trans students from playing in sports that match their gender identity.

“I see a slight change … I think a little bit more thoughtfulness is going into these arguments,” she tells The 19th, comparing today’s rhetoric and some republican lawmakers’ handling of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bills to the 2021 climate.