This is already the worst year in history for anti-trans legislation, and we’re not even three months into 2023. The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) estimates that more than 380 bills that seek to strip away basic rights, protections, and resources from trans people have been introduced in 44 states—by far the most ever introduced in a single year.
Many of the anti-LGBTQ+ proposals put forward so far are unprecedented in their scope and their cruelty: Florida’s SB254 would permit courts to remove trans children from affirming households if their parents allow them to access transition care, while Texas’s HB4378 would allow any individual to sue the organizers of and performers in a drag show if a child saw the performance. People who successfully sue over drag performances would be entitled to statutory “damages” of $5,000, mirroring the abortion bounty hunter law Texas enacted in 2021.
The sheer pace of anti-trans legislation actions is nearly impossible to keep up with. That’s the point: Opponents of the trans community—and equality, more broadly—want to overwhelm LGBTQ+ people and their allies by flooding legislative bodies with as many bills as possible. In Texas alone, estimates from Equality Texas, the state’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group, suggest that a staggering 137 bills targeting trans and queer people have been filed in 2023, and its legislature doesn’t adjourn for another two months, meaning more could be on the way.
With the dizzying vortex of attacks on the trans community in mind, here’s a simplified guide to everything that lawmakers are doing to roll back trans rights in the United States. It’s tough to get your head around these bills and other actions one by one, so having a sense of the bigger picture can help you determine why it’s past time to fight back.
Banning gender-affirming medical treatments for trans youth
Standard-setting major medical groups in the US, including the American Psychological Association and American Medical Association, support the use of hormone medications to treat gender dysphoria in young people in consultation with a doctor and other licensed health care professionals. This can drastically improve people’s mental health and align their bodies with their identities.
Even so, four states have already enacted laws this year that seek to restrict lifesaving, gender-affirming medications for trans minors—and more states are likely to follow. Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah have banned treatments like hormone therapy and puberty blockers for people under the age of 18, as well as surgeries intended to affirm a trans person’s sense of self. (Surgeries on trans minors are typically performed in rare cases in which a person has been exhibiting severe gender dysphoria for a prolonged period and has been in care for a minimum of six months, although the process often takes years.)
Eight states currently have limitations in place on the type of medications or surgeries that can be offered to trans minors. Alabama’s 2022 law is particularly severe: SB184 makes it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison for doctors to offer puberty blockers and hormones to trans people under the age of 19.
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And Iowa is one signature away from becoming the next state to limit transition medications for people under 18 after a ban passed its House and Senate last week—it was pushed through both chambers in a single day. Iowa’s governor, Kim Reynolds, has already limited trans medical treatments once: She signed legislation in 2019 outlawing Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care, a decision that was blocked by a district court two years later.
It remains to be seen just how many more states will join in targeting trans health services. According to the Track Trans Legislation bill tracker, more than 120 gender-affirming care bans have been introduced in 29 states. Some of these bills also impact medical treatment for trans adults, with states like Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Virginia introducing legislation to prevent trans people from transitioning until they’re over the age of 21. Oklahoma’s SB129 originally extended this all the way until the age of 26, although none of these bills have become law.
All of these proposals, even those that don’t succeed, stand to have an extremely detrimental impact on the lives of trans people. More than six in seven young trans people (86%) report that listening to lawmakers debate their rights has negatively affected their mental health, and 55% said the effect on their overall well-being has been “very negative,” according to national youth suicide prevention organization the Trevor Project. And trans kids and teenagers are already disproportionately vulnerable to depression, anxiety, and other forms of mental distress: A November 2022 poll from the Trevor Project found that around half of trans and nonbinary youth between the ages of 13 and 24 had experienced suicidal ideation within the prior year.
Stopping schools from offering trans-inclusive education
Florida made national headlines in 2022 by enacting controversial legislation that critics referred to as the “don’t say gay” law, and states around the US are following the same awful path.
The “don’t say gay” statute, HB1557, bans K–3 classrooms from acknowledging the lived realities of trans and queer students, and a pair of bills introduced in Texas would expand that prohibition even further: HB631 would keep staff members from teaching students about LGBTQ+ identities until the fifth grade, while HB1155 extends that all the way until high school.
According to NCTE, more than 43 bills in 17 states have been filed so far this year that aim to prevent educators from even mentioning LGBTQ+ identities, whether it’s acknowledging a student’s same-sex parents during class discussion or a teacher referencing their own LGBTQ+ identity. Even before Florida’s bill was signed into law by Republican governor Ron DeSantis in March 2022, a middle school art teacher in Florida was reportedly dismissed from her job for answering students’ questions about her sexuality.
Florida plans to make its “don’t say gay” law even more punishing this year by specifically targeting the trans community. In addition to extending the ban on LGBTQ+ discussions until the end of the eighth grade, Florida’s HB1223 amounts to a de facto ban on trans teachers in K–12 schools. Teachers would not be allowed to inform students of their pronouns if their gender does not match the sex they were assigned at birth, and the legislation would prevent some forms of disciplinary action against students or teachers who misgender a trans person. HB1223, which has been labeled by opponents as the “don’t say they” bill, is attempting to effectively erase trans people from the public education system entirely by defining one’s gender as an “immutable biological trait.” These anti-trans efforts, like those before them, could set a template for other states to pass similarly discriminatory legislation in the future.
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All of these types of proposals, no matter what age groups they single out, have a chilling effect on virtually any conversation regarding trans or queer identities in K–12 classrooms. Florida’s law and the copycat bills that are being pushed across the US are so vaguely worded that they have created mass confusion among teachers, students, and school districts, with little clarity provided by state leaders.
The “don’t say gay” statute in Florida, for instance, required that all instruction on LGBTQ+ subjects be “age-appropriate” without defining what that means, and school districts have interpreted it broadly to avoid potential lawsuits. Some Florida districts have banned trans-inclusive children’s books like Call Me Max and I Am Jazz from school libraries to avoid infringing on Florida’s laws. Others have reportedly ordered teachers to remove all books from their personal classroom collections.
Other states are trying to prevent trans students from using campus restrooms and locker rooms that match their identities, as lawmakers simultaneously continue to limit sports participation for trans and nonbinary youth. In addition to the 18 trans sports bans already in place, 25 states are attempting to prevent trans students from competing on sports teams that align with their gender, compromising 56 bills in total, an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) spokesperson tells SELF.
Passing restrictive drag bans that threaten trans people’s right to exist in public
In 2023 alone, at least 35 bills have been introduced in 16 states that seek to restrict drag performances, a Human Rights Campaign spokesperson tells SELF.
This month Tennessee became the first state in US history to restrict drag shows, and LGBTQ+ people and allies are concerned that the mandate—and others like it across the country—could have devastating consequences for trans people. Tennessee’s SB3, which was signed into law by Republican governor Bill Lee on March 3, prohibits “adult cabaret entertainment” from taking place on public property or in any venue where a minor could conceivably be present. Those who violate the statute face a Class A misdemeanor on the first offense and a Class E felony upon subsequent infractions. This means drag entertainers could face a sentence of between one and six years in prison—in addition to a maximum fine of $3,000—for performing at an all-ages drag brunch or reading to children at drag story hour events, both of which have already faced violent threats from far-right and white supremacist groups.
While the law specifically takes aim at drag performances, critics have warned that these bills could be used to penalize gender nonconformity. Nebraska’s version of the Tennessee drag ban, LB371, defines drag as any performance in which individuals exhibit a gender presentation “that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers,” which could potentially prohibit actors from performing in a local community theater production of Mrs. Doubtfire, make it illegal for trans people to sing karaoke at a bar, and make it virtually impossible for Pride parades as we know them to take place. The Nebraska bill goes so far as to outlaw drag events from being held within 1,000 feet of a “child care facility, park, place of worship, playground, public library, recreational area or facility, residence, school, or walking trail,” making it extremely difficult for LGBTQ+ people to find any community space at all.
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Given that drag shows are a major source of revenue for many gay bars, laws like these could decimate LGBTQ+ nightlife and severely impact the ability of some trans and queer people to generate income. Queer establishments are some of the few spaces where trans people may feel comfortable being themselves as workers, and they may be the only local businesses where trans people can find gainful employment due to extremely high rates of workplace discrimination. (While the Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that anti-LGBTQ+ bias in the workplace is illegal under federal civil rights laws, one in four trans Americans report having been dismissed from their jobs as a result of their identities. Trans people are twice as likely as cis people to be unemployed and three times as likely to have a household income under $10,000, according to a 2023 report from the Center for American Progress.) In all, anti-drag bills are also, in many senses, anti-trans bills.
Blocking trans people from using the bathroom that feels most appropriate for them
While it might seem as if these bills are coming out of nowhere, many of the proposals that are being introduced in 2023 are merely repackaged versions of discriminatory legislation from past years, even ones that were proven failures.
For context: Anti-trans lawmakers have gone back to the drawing board even as bathroom bills continue to be overturned in court or in state legislatures. North Carolina’s notorious bathroom bill, HB2, was repealed in 2017 following a corporate boycott estimated to cost the state more than $3.7 billion in lost revenue over the following 12 years, and the governor who signed that legislation into law, Republican Pat McCrory, was voted out of office. Only Tennessee has enacted a law restricting trans bathroom use in the years since, and a first-of-its-kind law requiring businesses in the state to hang signs about whether they permit trans customers to use restrooms aligned with their genders was struck down by a district court, pending appeal.
Despite that poor track record, opponents of equality keep on trying to push bigoted bathroom bills through: At least 41 anti-trans bathroom bills have been put forward this year in 21 states, according to NCTE. Among the worst is Arkansas’s SB270, which exploits unfounded, debunked fears that trans people are a danger to children as a pretense to control where they go to the restroom. If it became law, the statute would charge people with a misdemeanor of sexual indecency if they use a public bathroom or changing facility designated for “the opposite sex while knowing a minor of the opposite sex is present.” It would be the first bathroom law in US history to levy criminal penalties against trans people, and anyone found guilty of violating the law would face up to one year in jail as well as a fine of up to $2,500.
Although SB270 does not address questions of whether a parent, guardian, or caretaker could be punished if they accompanied a minor into the bathroom to change their diaper or just supervise kids, Arkansas’s bill has advanced anyway, approved by the state’s Republican-majority Senate in March by a 19–7 vote. Just one conservative member of the Senate opposed the legislation.
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Whether or not these efforts are successful, opponents of LGBTQ+ equality will continue to do what they have always done: shift their strategy until they find a group of people that the public is comfortable with discriminating against, whether it’s trans students trying to use the bathroom, athletes that simply want to compete as themselves, or any other vulnerable, easily exploitable group.
These bills aren’t going anywhere, even if they fail, and we are likely to see more of them next year. Starting in 2021, the passing of each year has sets new records for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, and with 2024 being a presidential election year, GOP candidates have already begun using trans rights as a wedge issue to rile up their base. Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley has launched her 2024 campaign by complaining that Florida’s “don’t say gay” law doesn’t go “far enough,” while former president Donald Trump has called for a nationwide law banning recognition of nonbinary identities and to cease federal funding for transition care if reelected to the White House.
Although committed LGBTQ+ activists across the country continue to fight the passage of legislation targeting the most marginalized members of their community, these bills remain an attack on the livelihood and the very existence of trans people. They will lead to more discrimination against trans people and perpetuate harm against a community that is simply trying to survive. Every single one of these bills, even if they fail, makes that survival harder. All of us must do what it takes to fight back until trans people can feel safe to be themselves without worrying that their own elected officials are trying to eradicate them.
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