How did we get to today with transgender identity, government policy, and the law?
Trans people have always existed, but the vocabulary we use to describe them today has only developed over the past 120 years or so. Much of what we know of trans people prior to the medicalization of transgender identity around the beginning of the 20th century, came from their interaction with the courts. In the United States, dressing and presenting yourself as someone not of the gender of your birth began to be criminalized in the 1840s under a series of local and state anti-crossdressing ordinances, the last new one of which was established in the 1950s and the last one repealed in 2013. In some places that had such ordinances, a person accosted by the police would need to show that they were wearing at least three articles of clothing of their birth designated gender in order to avoid arrest. Prior to those laws where those laws weren’t enacted, it wasn’t crossdressing that was illegal but rather various acts such as sodomy or, in the cases of trans men (or butch lesbians) who had married cis women, fraud. In other places, even after explicitly anti-crossdressing ordinances had been removed, trans women have been selectively targeted for police attention under suspicion of soliciting for prostitution, which has been characterized as “the crime of ‘walking while trans’”.
Distinctions among medical professionals between crossdressers and transsexuals weren’t well established until around 1949 when the word “transsexual” was coined and adapted from a similar German word in use from the 1920s there.
Someone like Christine Jorgenson, who had very publicly transitioned in the early 1950s, perhaps the first American to do so surgically, might avoid being harassed by anti-crossdressing laws as well as those transsexuals who passed for cisgender people, but those of lesser financial means or who otherwise read as more obviously trans were at risk of police harassment. Social norms were such that transsexuals who didn’t pass, who couldn’t have their birth identity kept stealth, often found themselves limited in where they could be employed. This could lead to self-fulfilling prophecies where trans women, especially those who had lost family support in their teens and early twenties, turned to sex work as their only available means of income.
1970s: From the Social Security Administration's formation in 1936 up to this point, a person's own testimony as to their gender was the only requirement needed. During the 1970s informal policies for approving gender marker changes began to make those changes more restricted.
1975 May In Connecticut, Darnell v. Lloyd ruling states that the State must demonstrate a substantial interest in preventing the change of gender markers on birth certificates. The right to correct the gender on birth certificates varies from state to state and is still restricted in some states.
1975 In Columbus v. Roberts, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the 1840 law that “"`[n]o person shall appear on any public street or other public place in a state of nudity or in a dress not belonging to his or her sex, or in an indecent or lewd dress'" was unconstitutionally vague and violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
1976 SCOTUS refused to hear an appeal by Paula Grossman, who was fired from her job after announcing her transition.
1976 United States Department of State added a gender marker with M or F options to U.S. Passports.
1976 New Jersey courts, for the first time, allowed a trans woman who had had gender confirmation surgery, to marry.
1976 Dick Carlson, having previously outed business woman and huckster Liz Carmichael as trans, outed tennis player Renee Richards as trans as well. Carlson is the father of Tucker Carlson.
1977 Renee Richards, a trans woman, is allowed by the New York Supreme Court to participate as a woman in the U.S. Open tennis tournament
1978 The first wave of anti-gay curriculum laws began being adopted, in part due to the advocacy of Anita Bryant.
1980 November: The Social Security Administration adopted a policy that to change one’s gender marker the citizen must provide, “...clinical or medical records, or other combination of documents showing the sex change, or any medical record showing the sex-change surgery has been started.” Previously the person needed only to assert their gender.
1982
1984 Karen Ulane, a trans woman, was denied Title VII sex discrimination protections by the US Seventh Circuit Court, on the grounds that she isn’t a woman.
1989 May SCOTUS case Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins established that gender presentation was a protected class for employment purposes under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and became the basis for later interpretation of the legal basis of those rights extending to gender identity of trans people.
1992: Phyllis Frye organized the first annual International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy in Houston Texas. It was announced and promoted over the early internet through Usenet.
1992: U.S. Department of State allows citizens to change their gender markers on their passports from assigned gender at birth if various supporting documents were supplied.
[Jess]"...I never thought I'd spend so much of my life fighting over which bathroom to use."
Ruth nodded. "...If you and I don't fight for the right to live, then the kids coming up will have to do it."
-- from Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg 1993
1993 Minnesota added gender identity as a protected class against discrimination, the first jurisdiction in the United States to do so.
1993 November: President Clinton signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which states that a religiously neutral law can burden a religion just as much as one that was intended to interfere with religion; therefore, the "Government shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability. Its initial usage was for things like allowing certain Native American groups to use peyote in religious ceremonies despite its general use being against federal law. Since its passage, various states have passed or attempted to pass their own versions of RFRAs which have or intended to have the effect of eroding the church/state separation of the “Lemon Test” established in the 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman SCOTUS case and later the Obergefell v. Hodges marriage case.
1994 January Conservative lobbying and law group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) was founded by “ James Dobson of Focus on the Family; Bill Bright and Larry Burkett of Campus Crusade for Christ; Marlin Maddoux of International Christian Media; D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries; and Alan Sears, former director of the anti-pornography Meese Commission and author of the 2003 book "The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today."”
1994 February: "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" went into effect, formally forbidding LGBT people who were out in the military, while also banning discrimination against those who were closeted.
1996 September: The Defense of Marriage Act went into effect, allowing State governments to block same-sex marriages and forbiding Federal recognition of same-sex marriages.
1997 February: Cambridge, MA became one of the few local municipalities adding gender identity as a protected class against discrimination. Pittsburgh followed suit in March. In Massachusetts, Boston would do the same in 2002 followed by Northampton in 2005.
1997 May The murderer of Chantelle Pickett, having used the “trans panic defense” was acquitted of murder and found guilty of assault and battery and sentenced to two years in prison. Another Boston area black trans woman was quoted in the paper as being worried by the light sentence “It’ll just give people a message that it’s OK to do this. This is a message we cannot afford to send.”
1997 June: SCOTUS ruled in City of Boerne v. Flores that the Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act didn’t apply to state laws, leading many states to propose and pass their own versions of the RFRA.
2001 Rhode Island added gender identity as a protected class
(Two states with GI anti-discrimination laws: MN, RI)
2002 July The European Court of Human Rights in Goodwin & I v United Kingdom, ruled that transgender people have the right to update the gender on their birth certificates, leading to the Gender Recognition Act of 2004
2002 October The Social Security Administration requires surgical intervention be completed before gender markers can be changed for trans people. From 1980 through 2002 documentation showing medical interventions had started was the requirement.
2003 California, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania added gender identity as a protected class
(Five states with GI anti-discrimination laws: CA, MN, NM, PA, RI)
2003 June In deciding Lawrence v. Texas, SCOTUS struck down anti-sodomy laws.
2003 August The Social Security Administration required that a surgeon attest to the completion of gender affirming surgery prior to updating someone's gender marker.
2003 November As the result of a case at its Supreme Judicial Court, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to legalize same sex marriage.
2004 May following the State Supreme Judicial Court ruling six months previously, the first legal same sex marriages were recognized in Massachusetts.
2004 August The US Sixth Circuit Court in Smith v. City of Salem ruled that actions against “men because they do wear dresses and makeup, or otherwise act femininely, are also engaging in sex discrimination, because the discrimination would not occur but for the victim's sex", and violating Title VII, which builds case law protecting gender expression - however in doing so they refer to the plaintiff, who is a trans woman, thus ruling in her favor but by misgendering her as a man.
2005 Maine added gender identity as a protected class
(Six states with GI anti-discrimination laws: CA, ME, MN, NM, PA, RI)
2005 Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation was founded and began to create model bills focused on promoting Christian Nationalism, including ones supporting religious exemptions from anti-discrimination regulations.
2005 and 2008: Lower court rulings regard job discrimination based on a person’s transitioning plans as sexual discrimination under Title VII and thus prohibited. These presaged the SCOTUS rulings on R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission consolidated with Bostock v. Clayton County..
2006 Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington added gender identity as a protected class
(Nine states with GI anti-discrimination laws: CA, IL, ME, MN, NJ, NM, PA, RI, WA)
2006 September Gwen Araujo had been brutally murdered in California in 2002. She was a trans woman and lawyers for the defendants argued a Trans Panic Defense. In response in 2005 The Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act was submitted and in September 2006, it was signed into law. While not a full Panic Defense Ban, it required jury instructutions to not let bias against a victim's gender identity or sexual orientation affect their judgement.
2007 Colorado, Iowa, Oregon, and Vermont added gender identity as a protected class bringing the total of such states to thirteen.
(Thirteen states with GI anti-discrimination laws: CA, CO, IL, IA, ME, MN, NJ, NM, PA, OR, RI, VT, WA)
There’s not really a distinct moment when people began reacting against gains in the civil rights of transgender people, but in 2008, we see the beginning of public campaigns by organized groups, chiefly ones with conservative Christian ties, characterized by some as Christian Nationalists.
2008 May: Colorado enacted a law to protect people from discrimination based on gender identity in public accommodations. Focus on the Family branded the law a “bathroom bill” and promoted fears of men entering women’s bathrooms to endanger the safety of women and girls. This may be the first instance of this tactic, however it resonates with earlier spreading of fear of gays and lesbians in changing areas as well as of BIPOC in white changing areas.
2009 LegiAlerts Archives: LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking 2009
2009 April In Colorado, Angie Zapata’s murderer became the first person in the U.S. convicted of a hate crime against a transgender victim because of their transgender status.
2009 October 22 Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act added actual or perceived gender and gender identity to classes that can be considered under federal hate crimes. It went into effect in 2010.
2010 LegiAlerts Archives: LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking 2010
2010 US Tax Court ruled that a person can deduct gender confirmation surgery costs and hormone therapy costs as medical expenses and not consider them cosmetic
2010 by executive order President Obama banned gender identity discrimination on some federal jobs
2010 December: The U.S. Court of Appeals of the 11th Circuit decided that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment protects trans people from suffering employment discrimination in the Glenn v. Brumby case.
2010 December: A repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell was signed into law.
2010-2014 The Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) went into effect in stages.
2011 LegiAlerts Archives LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking 2011
2011 Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Nevada passed legislation adding gender identity as a protected class for purposes of housing, employment, public education, and credit. In Massachusetts this went into effect July 1, 2012. In Massachusetts, public accommodations protections were specifically excluded due to controversies about this being a “bathroom bill”. People such as Patricia Doherty, executive director of Catholic Citizenship, had, in leaflets distributed prior to the 2010 elections, characterized the Massachusetts bill as one "which would allow biological males access to women's bathroom and fitness facilities." Those protections were encoded into law four years later in 2016.
(Seventeen* states with GI anti-discrimination laws: CA, CO, CT, IL, IA, HI, ME, MA*, MN, NV, NJ, NM, PA, OR, RI, VT, WA)
2011 September: The repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was fully implemented.
2012 LegiAlerts Archives: LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking 2012
2013 LegiAlerts Archives: LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking 2013
2013 Arizona and Massachusetts failed to pass anti-trans “bathroom bills”. Massachusetts’ bill also sought to explicitly bar gender identity as a protected class from public accommodations and athletics. The Massachusetts bill’s sponsors continued to recycle it each two year session through 2019-2020, failing each time.
2013 The Social Security Administration no longer required surgical intervention in order to make gender marker changes.
2013 The DSM-V depathologized the status of being transgender.
2013 June: in United States v. Windsor, SCOTUS decided that DOMA requirement that the Federal government not recognize same-sex marriages, violated the Fifth Amendment's "due process" clause requiring the Federal government to recognize same-sex marriages that were state sanctioned.
Laverne Cox was on the cover of Time Magazine and in a breakout role on Orange is the New Black. The media were focussing a lot more on the novelty of trans people than they had in years. The American Psychiatric Association, in their fifth major revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, had, in the previous year, removed the diagnosis that described all trans people as having a disorder, replacing it with “gender dysphoria”, essentially saying that it’s not being trans that’s the problem, it’s the stresses you have because of your transness - and the treatment for those stresses is usually transitioning.
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went into full gear, requiring health insurance care for transgender people and not treating their transness as a pre-existing condition. Students like Nicole Maines were having court victories and being allowed to use the bathrooms aligned with their gender, not whatever it said on their original birth certificate. States were requiring that trans students be allowed to fully participate in public school sports. The Obama administration was asserting Title IX and Title VII protections on the basis of sex were inclusive of protections on the basis of gender identity and expression.
Something had to give.
Groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom began organizing, fighting back against the strides trans students were gaining in the schools in facilities usage and athletic participation.
2014 LegiAlerts Archives: LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking 2014
2014 Jan 1: Under the ACA, being transgender is no longer considered a pre-existing condition for insurance purposes.
2014 January 30: Doe v. Clenchy: Maine State Supreme Court ruled that Nicole Maines, a trans high school girl, could use the girls' bathrooms at her high school. She had begun pursuing this case while in middle school in 2008.
2014 April: The Obama Administration’s Department of Education issued a Dear Colleague letter and associated questions and answers, declaring that Title IX protections against sexual violence apply to people on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation as well as sex. This was rescinded by the Trump administration in September 2017.
2014 May, September, Alliance Defending Freedom attempted to reverse transgender friendly school policies in districts in Arizona and Kentucky.
2014 June: SCOTUS decided Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. found that for-profit corporations could be considered persons under the RFRA allowing the company to not provide insurance for contraceptive services due to religious reasons. This prompted interested parties to explicitly write bills to allow religious exclusions to insurance and other health care provision requirements.
2014: July President Obama’s executive orders added gender identity as a protected class for federal civilian jobs and for federal contractor and subcontractor jobs.
2014: Alliance Defending Freedom solicited aid from the American College of Pediatricians in constructing support for school trans bathroom/locker room/sports bans, as revealed in e-mail leaks in 2023.
2014: September. California became the first state to institute a full Gay/Trans Panic Defense Ban with 2013 AB 2501.
2014 December The Obama administration’s Justice Department policy under Eric Holder considered gender identity to be protected under Title VII’s sex discrimination protections,
2014:Federal Employee Benefits no longer banned from covering transition related services and in 2016 Federal employee insurers are required to cover transition related services
2014 December: Lobbying group, Alliance Defending Freedom, mailed policy recommendations to schools across the country and produced model legislation for statehouses across the country for the Student Physical Privacy Act - a student bathroom/locker room bill.
Framing it as a privacy issue, the ADF and others put forward legislation which came to be known as “bathroom bills” reversing the application of that label from Colorado in 2008. Most of these were focused on schools, as were a handful of bills set in opposition to recent gains of trans students being allowed to play on public school sports teams aligned with their genders. Other legislators saw an opening in the Hobby Lobby decision and put forward new bills looking to allow discrimination against trans and other LGBT+ people if to do otherwise would conflict with someone’s religious beliefs or their freedom of conscience.
2015 LegiAlerts Archives: LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking 2015
2015 Nine states considered anti-trans bathroom bills and none passed. Many of them used model legislation produced by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). titled the Student Physical Privacy Act
2015 In the wake of the Hobby Lobby decision, 16 states proposed new state level RFRA legislation, many of which explicitly cited the ability to discriminate against LGBT people. Indiana’s and Arkansas’ passed, joining 20 other states with prior state level RFRAs.
2015 At least three states including Massachusetts, Minnesota, and South Dakota attempted to ban trans student participation in sports in reaction to those states explicitly allowing that participation in the previous year or two.
2015 Michelle Tea, launched Drag Queen Story Hour (Later "Drag Story Hour") as a non-profit series of reading events for children in libraries and elsewhere. Such events later became a focus for the ire of transphobes.
2015 January: South Carolina tried and failed to pass a ban on gender affirming care for prisoners.
2015 June: SCOTUS released the Obergefell v. Hodges decision on marriage equality, rendering same sex marriages legal across the United States. This has been cited as a moment where social conservative organizations pivoted their focus towards anti-transgender messaging and legislation as “a cause that — like opposing gay marriage — would rally the base and raise the movement’s profile on the national stage” (Archived version)
2015 June: Project Blitz, Family Research Council (FRC), American Principles Project (APP), and Heritage produced the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) model bill, launching it at both the state and federal level. It sought to allow discrimination against those with same-sex marriages or in same-sex relationships under the guise of Free Exercise of Religion. Later versions began to add protections for anti-trans discrimination under the same clause
2015 November: In Texas, Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), which would have granted public accommodations protections from discrimination based on gender identity, was branded a “bathroom bill” by opponents. Texas Supreme Court required the measure to be put on the ballot where it was defeated.
2016 LegiAlerts Archives: LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking 2016
2016 The American College of Pediatricians, a fringe group meant to sound like they were of similar standing to the primary professional organization for U.S. pediatricians, the American Academy of Pediatrics was founded in 2002. In 2016 they began to take up anti-trans conversion therapy advocacy and over the following five years a dozen other organizations with similar goals sprung up pushing conversion therapy under the guise of "Gender Exploration Therapy". Those organizations shared many ties.
2016 Focus on the Family's legislative activism branch the Family Policy Alliance, begins hosting annual "Statesmen Academy" conferences to promote Christian nationalist oriented legislation and train legislators
2016 March: Nineteen state legislatures proposed “bathroom bills” to limit the use of single sex bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms to those whose birth assigned sex aligns with them. At least five of them used ADF’s Student Physical Privacy Act as a model. North Carolina’s Public Facility, Privacy & Security Act passed and became law but was revoked the following year. It was the subject of a number of protests including business boycotts. South Dakota’s legislature passed a similar bill but it was vetoed by the governor. Several companies boycotted the state in protest. Minnesota, South Carolina, and South Dakota tried and failed to pass bans for trans kids participation in school sports. Oregon tried and failed to pass a law banning Medicaid from paying for gender affirming care for minors.
2016 April: Mississippi passed a FADA variation called the Religious Liberty Accommodations Act or Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act which allowed denial of performing same sex marriages and services to transgender people if they conflict with religious views. It was under injunction for about a year from 2016 until mid 2017 when the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the injunction and later SCOTUS declined to hear further appeals, leaving the act as an active law. It was both a product of Project Blitz and Alliance Defending Freedom.
2016 May: The Obama administration’s Department of Health & Human Services issues regulations against discrimination against LGBT folks, particularly transgender, intersex, and gender non-conforming people for healthcare as part of the ACA. This and the ACA in general help guarantee coverage for services connected to medical transitioning, as well as penalize discrimination during general care. The Obama administration’s Departments of Justice and of Education issued directives that schools treat students’ gender as a protected class according to Title IX of the Civil Rights Act as falling within the named protected class of sex.
2016 July: The Massachusetts Legislature added gender identity as a protected class for public accommodations.
2016 August: Dr. Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist previously in charge of Johns Hopkins’ Gender Identity Clinic, who had it shut down in 1979 under the belief that being transgender was purely psychological and should not be addressed through hormone therapy or surgery, co-authored a 144 page report for The New Atlantis on Sexuality and Gender Identity, a publication of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative Christian think tank. It contended that both sexual orientation and gender identity were not biologically determined. These theories had long been discredited, but the article began to be cited as justification for anti-trans policies and legislation.
2016 November Roy Cooper won the governorship of North Carolina from the sitting Republican governor, having pushed him to repeal the bathroom bill.
2017 LegiAlerts Archives: LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking 2017
2017 A number of states proposed anti-trans legislation this cycle. Sixteen states attempted to follow North Carolina’s lead on transgender bathroom restrictions but their bills failed to pass, many of them continuing to follow the model legislation of the ADF’s Student Physical Privacy Act. Fourteen states attempted laws restricting trans students’ freedoms in schools but they failed to pass. North Carolina passed bills to stop local municipalities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances contrary to state laws, to prevent an end run around the bathroom ban. Arizona tried and failed to pass laws banning prisoners from gender affirming care and banning Medicaid from paying for minors’ gender affirming care.
The Trump administration enacted a number of policies targeting out groups including trans people. It rolled back Obama era civil rights protections for trans people in various arenas, and its various cabinet level agencies enacted a range of discriminatory policies.
Meanwhile by the fall, groups like the American Principles Project and other attendees of the Values Voters Summit explicitly began taking a divide and conquer strategy of confronting what they saw as inroads from the LGBT community by focusing on peeling off the transgender community from the broader LGBT community as well as aiming at the perceived low hanging fruit of trans girls in sports.
Congressional Prayer Caucus's Project Blitz published its 2017 version of its Report and Analysis on Religious Freedom Measures Impacting Prayer and Faith in America, which included late 2016 versions of model legislation for:
Resolution Establishing Public Policy Favoring Reliance on and Maintenance of Birth Gender
The 2017 version of the FADA - The Marriage Tolerance Act, explicitly adapted from Mississippi's 2016 version
Bills of a similar nature to FADA such as the
"Licensed Professionals' Civil Rights Act" and the
Teacher Protection Act
State RFRA's retitled "Preserving Religious Freedom Act"
2017 January: The Trump administration removed mentions of LGBTQ people from the websites of the White House and the State and Labor departments.
2017 February: The Trump administration’s Department of Education revoked the previous administration's guidance on gender identity discrimination in schools.
2017 March The Trump administration’s:
Justice Department:
failed to appeal an injunction blocking the ACA protections against transgender discrimination.
dropped its request for an injunction against NC’s bathroom bill
canceled its broadcast to the National Institute of Corrections regarding transgender inmates
HHS:
Removed demographic questions about LGBTQ+ people from its Centers for Independent Living performance assessments
announced it would not collect information on LGBT people in its annual survey of the service needs of older people
HUD:
withdrew required postering of emergency shelters informing residents of their HUD anti-LGBT discrimination protections
shut down a report on the outcomes of three year program fighting against LGBT youth homelessness
removed links to four key resource documents from its website, which informed emergency shelters on best practices for serving transgender people facing homelessness and complying with HUD regulations.
State Department: announced its delegation to the UN Commission on the Status of Women conference would include two anti-LGBT organizations
Census: retracted a proposal to collect LGBT demographics
2017 April. The Trump administration’s Justice department dropped its suit against NC’s bathroom bill
2017 May. The Trump administration’s HHS announced plans to remove nondiscrimination protections for trans people under the ACA.
2017 June The Trump administration’s Department of Education withdrew its finding that an Ohio school district discriminated against a trans girl.
2017 July. President Trump announced plans to reinstate the ban on transgender people from military service. Over the next several months, retired military, civil rights organizations, Congressional legislators and multiple Federal District Courts blocked or attempted to block or moderate that policy.
2017 October DOJ Secretary Sessions rescinded Obama era protections from discrimination against trans people under Title VII. The 2020 Bostock decision effectively restored those protections.
2017 October At the Values Voters Summit, panelists who had been fighting against transgender inclusion in a Virgina school district since 2015, recommended that in order to push back against LGBTQ gains to “Focus on gender identity to divide and conquer…. For all of its recent success, the LGBT alliance is actually fragile, and the trans activists need the gay rights movement to help legitimize them. Gender identity on its own is just a bridge too far. If you separate the T from the alphabet soup, we’ll have more success.” They talked about appealing to progressive groups positioning trans women as the ultimate misogyny. Looking back, Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project noted that pushing against trans girls and trans women in sports was an issue which could get broader traction. (Archived link)
2017 December: The Trump Administration directed the CDC to remove seven words including “transgender” from official documents connected to its upcoming budget. This trend of removing language supportive of outgroups from within cabinet level institutions continued throughout this presidency.
2018: LegiAlerts Archives: LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking 2018
2018: New Hampshire tried and failed to pass a gender affirming care ban for minors. New Hampshire also tried and failed to declare gender affirming care for minors to be child abuse. New Hampshire tried and failed to pass a ban on Medicaid coverage for Gender Affirming Care. Pennsylvania tried and failed to pass a ban on insurance coverage for gender affirming care for minors.
2018 January: The Trump Administration’s HHS’s OCR (Office of Civil Rights) opened up a Conscience and Religious Freedom Division which focused on advocating for people to be allowed to discriminate against those they had religious conflict with, which typically meant LGBTQIA+ people or services related to abortion. This is in line with FRC's FADA model bill from 2015 and onward & ADF's similar FCGD from 2016 forward - both pushed by Project Blitz.
2018 February: The Department of Education clarified that it would not investigate or take action on any complaints by transgender students about not being allowed to use the school bathrooms associated with their gender identity.
2018 March: A federal court struck down Idaho’s prohibition on trans people changing their birth certificates.
2018 March: The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal RFRA can not be used to justify discrimination against LGBT+ people
2018 April: After 4-H instituted a policy welcoming LGBT+ members, there was conservative backlash. The Trump Administration’s USDA pressured 4-H to rescind that policy, which it did.
2018 May: The Trump administration ordered the Bureau of Prisons to house prisoners according to “biological sex” rather than gender identity, reversing Obama era guidance.
2018 July: The Department of Justice created a task force to defend religious liberties, specifically related to being able to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.
2018 July: Idaho Rep. Barbara Ehardt enlisted the aid of Alliance Defending Freedom in the development of legislation to ban trans girls from participating in girls sports, which would eventually become the model bill , the Save Women's Sports Act, passed in Idaho in 2020 as the Fairness in Women's Sports Act.
2018 October: The Department of Health and Human Services announced plans to define transgender people out of existence by treating gender as “a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth”, language found in many of the anti-trans bills in the state houses across the country.
2018 November: Massachuestts voters denied an attempt to roll back the 2016 protection from discrimination in public accommodations based on gender identity via a ballot question.
2019: LegiAlerts Archives: LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking 2019
2019: Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, and South Dakota, a total of four states, all tried and failed to pass bans against trans athletes participating in school sports at various levels.
2019: Illinois, Kansas, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota, a total of six states, tried and failed to pass bans on gender affirming care for minors. New Hampshire’s version would have considered such care to be child abuse. Kansas’s version was part of a large bill that also railed against Secular Humanism and was also against same sex marriages. Alaska tried and failed to pass a ban on gender affirming care for prisoners.
2019 April: The Trump administration’s ban on transgender people serving in the military went into effect.
2019 May: The Trump administration’s HHS finalized its policy for allowing health care providers to cite religious beliefs to allow refusal of care for a variety of patients including LGBTQ+ ones. This paralleled the post-Hobby Lobby State RFRA bills/laws. In addition it announced an interpretation of ACA regulations removing protections from discrimination for LGBTQ+ people under the sex based protections. That same month HUD under Ben Carson proposed regulations for homeless shelters allowing discrimination against transgender people, citing “privacy, safety, practical concerns, religious beliefs.” Carson continued to express disparaging remarks about trans people, particularly trans women throughout the year.
2019 June: The Trump administration prohibited the flying of the rainbow Pride flags at U.S. embassies. .
2019 August: South Dakota Senator Deutsch, began coordinating with several anti-trans organizations to construct a gender affirming health care ban for minors which, when introduced, was called the Vulnerable Child Protection Act (VCPA) (sometimes "Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act" or V-CAP). It failed on first introduction but served as a template for future efforts and the megagroup continued to co-ordinate its legislative efforts. South Dakota did pass such a ban in February 2023. This group included Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), the Eagle Forum, Christian Medical & Dental Associations, The Heritage Foundation, The Family Policy Alliance, and the American Principles Project.
2019 August: The Trump administration’s Department of Labor announced that it would not enforce compliance with Obama era protections against discrimination of LGBT+ people by government contractors if the reasons given for such discrimination were due to the employer’s religious beliefs.
2019 October: Legislators began announcing filings of the V-CAP GAC bans for minors.
2019 November: The Trump administration’s HHS issued regulations allowing discrimination against LGBT adoptive and foster parents on the basis of providers’ religious beliefs.
2020-2022 Hundreds of anti-trans copycat bills were introduced to statehouses across the United States seeking to push back on transgender rights. Many of them targeted access to healthcare, particularly for transgender youth - some to the point of declaring support of such care to be acts of child abuse. Many others target access to single gender sports participation also, targeting transgender youth. Anti-LGBTQ+ organizations such as Alliance Defending Freedom are responsible for providing blueprint bills for many of these efforts. Early passages of such legislation in Idaho in 2020 were stayed by the courts pending appeal, while others as in Arkansas went into effect after passage. These bills rely on false information about athletic performance of transgender girls and false medical information about transgender youth. This article by James Factora for Them gives an overview with factual sources. The Media Often Gets Trans Stories Wrong. This Guide Hopes to Change That.
2020: Legislature
Sports Bans: Alliance Defending Freedom's trans women & girls sports ban model bill, the "Save Women's Sports Act" was launched, becoming law in Idaho. It was the first of several trans sports bans passed by statehouses though the only one to do so in 2020. Most of the later sports ban bills, like "FWSA" were variations on Alliance Defending Freedom's "Save Women's Sports Act". A total of 15 SWSA based bills in 10 states appeared in 2023 (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi. New Hampshire, Ohio, and South Carolina) Alabama’s “Gender Is ReaL (GIRL)” Act failed in two versions. 9 additional states: Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington, and West Virginia, also tried failing anti trans kids in sports bills for a total of 19 states trying and failing to pass 30 sports ban bills, with one succeeding. Three sports ban bills failed at the Federal level. In addition, one state, Massachusetts, had two sports ban bills carry over from the previous year and fail.
Gender Affirming Care Ban Bills:
Ten states including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, South Dakota, and West Virginia introduced variations of the Vulnerable Child Protection Act from the Deutsch group in 13 bills. None passed this year.
Other forms of GAC ban bills appeared in Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee, and likewise failed to pass.
2020: As for the Executive Branch, the Trump administration’s HHS removed anti-discrimination protections of transgender people for health care settings and insurers denying transition related medical care. Trump’s HUD removes anti-discrimination protections of transgender people for homeless shelters and other housing services receiving federal funds. Trump’s Department of the Interior also removed anti-discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation.
2020 March: Idaho passed a variation of ADF's "Save Women's Sports Act" (SWSA) model bill titled the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” (FWSA) which defines assigned gender at birth as biological sex and prohibits “biological males” from participating in girls' or women's single sex sports. It was put under injunction in August 2020. That injunction was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2023.
2020 March: Idaho passed a law banning transgender people from changing their names and gender markers on their birth certificates, despite a ruling two years previously that such bans were illegal by violating the Equal Protection Clause. In June 2020, a Magistrate Court the law from going into effect, and a 2022 lawsuit resulted in damages awarded to plaintiffs seeking to change the gender on their birth certificate.
2020 June in the Bostock case, SCOTUS determined that Title VII protects people from job discrimination on the basis of their transgender status as falling within its protections on the basis of sex in a case brought by Aimee Stevens, who died shortly before the decision was released. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice and Solicitor General had opposed that decision.
2020 June the HHS regulations announced in May of 2019, removing protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation, from the affordable care act, went into effect, and were promptly enjoined.
2021: Legislature
Trans Sports Bans: ADF's "Save Women's Sports Act" became law in 6 states, and trans sports bans of other formats were passed in 3 more states such that nine new states had such bans: Alabama, Arkansas had two, Florida, Mississippi, Montana, South Dakota by Executive order, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia; bringing the total such bans to ten. They have been titled The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act: in Idaho, Arkansas, Florida ; The Save Women’s Sports Act in Montana; The Gender Integrity Reinforcement Legislation for Girls' Sports (GIRLS) Act in Arkansas. A total of 97 sports ban bills (50 of them SWSA's) appeared in 35 different states (27 of those states had SWSA bills) that year.
Gender Affirming Care Bans:
The Deutsch group’s Vulnerable Child Protection Act anti-GAC bill was proposed in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and West Virginia but failed to pass.
The Family Research Council (FRC) and its affiliate Family Policy Alliance (FPA) are both groups spun off from Focus on the Family. Since 2016, FPA has hosted Statesmen Academy annual conferences for promoting Christian nationalist legislation. Its graduates developed the Help Not Harm Act model bill for banning gender affirming care for minors - taking input from Women's Liberation Front (WoLF). In 2021 some versions of "The Help Not Harm Act" model bill were called “The Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act”. Under that name these bills were proposed in Arkansas and Ohio, passing in Arkansas.
Kidney specialist Dr. Stanley Goldfarb founded the lobbying group "Do No Harm Medicine" which began to develop the gender affirming care ban model bill, the JUST FACTS Act.
2021 The U.S. Department of State changed its passport policy to allow gender marker changes without requiring any additional supporting documentation, and allowed an X option in addition to the M and F options.
2021 January: Conservative political action group Moms For Liberty was formed
2021 April Arkansas passed the first Gender affirming health care ban for those under the age of 18 entitled The Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act. This was blocked by a Federal District Court in August, 2022, and struck down by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in June 2023.
2021 April A Birth Certificate change ban was passed in Montana, bringing the total of such bans to two.
2021 May The ADF began meeting with the Ziklag group, a collection of multimillionaire conservative, Dominionist donors, to plot strategies to find ways to redirect funding away from public schools and to school vouchers for religious schools, by claiming that public schools promoted “The religion of Secularism”, language that made its way into some of the anti-trans model bills.
2021 September FPA's Statesmen Academy promoted version 2.0 of the Help Not Harm, GAC ban legislation, which made it into Wisconsin's GAC ban bill in 2022.
2022 Legislature:
Trans Sports Bans were passed in eight states: Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee had two, bringing the total number of states with such bans to eighteen. They have been titled The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act: in Idaho, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana ; The Save Women’s Sports Act in Arizona, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina; The Gender Integrity Reinforcement Legislation for Girls' Sports (GIRLS) Act in Arkansas.\
Gender Affirming Care Bans:
The Deutsch group’s VCPA was proposed in Arizona, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and West Virginia, passing in Alabama.
Family Research Council’s Help Not Harm / SAFE Act, having been successful in Arkansas in 2021 was proposed again in Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin but failed to pass.
Often in conjunction with bans on instruction of so-called “Critical Race Theory” multiple states passed “Don’t Say Gay/Trans” laws forbidding discussion of anything related to gender identity or sexual orientation in various grade levels of schools. States included: Arizona, Florida had two.
2022 April: A blanket gender affirming health care ban for minors was passed in Alabama (the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act (V-CAP)), it was a variation of bills that had failed in 2020 and 2021, themselves based off of the SD State Rep. Deutsch group’s Vulnerable Child Protection Act, developed in August 2019. This brought the total number of those bans signed into law to two. A surgical only health care ban for minors was passed in Arizona. A district court placed an injunction on Alabama’s law in May 2022, which was lifted by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2023.
2022 June: Chris Rufo, who pushed the negative associations with the phrase “Critical Race Theory” started pushing to associate trans people with drag and drag with strippers. "Conservatives should start using the phrase 'trans stripper' in lieu of 'drag queen.' It has a more lurid set of connotations and shifts the debate to sexualization. 'Drag queens in schools' invites a debate; 'trans strippers in schools' anchors an unstoppable argument. Let the Left try to nitpick the phrase: we can say that ‘trans’ is a stand-in for ‘transvestite’ and we can show videos that are undeniably strip shows…. The trick is to shift the language in a way that is factually accurate and has a plausible claim to neutrality, but attaches a new set of connotations to the concept that shifts the debate in your favor."
2022 June: A Federal District Court in Arkansas placed a preliminary Injunction against Arkansas’ SAFE Act, which had been set to block gender affirming care for minors.
2022 August 24: The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act protections apply to those trans people with gender dysphoria.
2022 August and December: The 5th and 8th Circuit Courts of Appeals ruled in two separate cases that the Federal RFRA allows healthcare providers to discriminate against providing trans patients medical care otherwise warranted under the ACA.
2023 Legislature:
Gender Affirming Care Bans
The Deutsch group’s VCPA was proposed in Idaho and South Carolina and passed in Idaho.
Family Research Council’s Help Not Harm / SAFE Act, having been successful in Arkansas in 2021, was proposed again in Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin - and passed in Missouri.
Help Not Harm's Just FACTs Act appeared in Arkansas, Iowa, and Montana
2023 January 6: A Federal District Court in Tennessee ruled that the Tennessee law requiring signage warning that opposite sex people are allowed to use single sex bathrooms in businesses that allow trans people to use the bathrooms aligned with their gender identity was unconstitutional. The State concurred and dropped the law.
2023 February 1: Trump's Agenda 47 policy proposals regarding trans people were framed in a video and position list titled "President Trump's Plan to Protect Children from Left-Wing Gender Insanity". It includes criminal bans on gender affirming care for minors, medicaid and medicare coverage bans, restriction of legal genders to male and female and to those assigned at birth, forced outing by schools, blocking trans women and girls from participating in sports as women and girls, and many elements of hate speech.
2023 May 20: AP study finds three main groups behind model legislation for anti-GAC laws including Do No Harm’s “Just FACTs Act”, and The Family Research Council’s SAFE Act.
2023 June 22: A Florida Federal District Court struck down Florida Agency of Health Care Administration’s policy and the related section of a new 2023 law banning state Medicare coverage for transgender related health care.
2023 June 23: A Florida Federal District Court temporarily enjoined that state’s anti-drag law from being enforced on First Amendment grounds.
2023 June 26: Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach announced that in light of KS’s new law requiring state ID’s gender markers (such as on driver’s licenses and birth certificates) to align with assigned gender at birth, that folks who have previously updated their IDs must now change them back. North Dakota, Tennessee, and Montana passed similar laws earlier in 2023.
2023 June 30: Williams v. Kincaid: SCOTUS declined to hear an appeal of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that the ADA applies to those with gender dysphoria.
2023 July 18: The Virginia Department of Education put out a series of anti-trans discriminatory policies that run counter to Virginia law.
2023 August 1: In a move supported by the group “Women’s Independent Voice” Oklahoma Governor Stitt signed an executive order “The Women’s Bill of Rights” requiring state agencies, boards, and school statistics to use the terms male and female exclusively based on assigned at birth sex, as well as defining those terms based on how their “biological system” were “designed” to relate to ova production and fertilization.
2023 August 16: North Carolina became the eighteenth state to enact a gender affirming medical care ban for minors this year. The status of gender affirming care bans for minors are now as follows:
April 6, 2021: Arkansas (Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act) (Struck down by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals 6/20/23)
March 29, 2022: Arizona (GAC Surgery ban for minors)
April 6 2022: Alabama (Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection (V-CAP) Act) (District Court injunction vacated by 11th Circuit Court of Appeals 8/21/23)
Jan 28 2023: Utah
Feb 14 2023: South Dakota
Feb 28 2023: Mississippi (Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures (REAP) Act; uses both SAFE Act and Just FACTs Act language)
March 2 2023: Tennessee (District Court Injunction 6/28/23; lifted by 6th Circuit Court of Appeals 7/8/23)
March 16, 2023: Arkansas (again; this time a Just FACTS Act)
March 22 2023: Iowa (SAFE Act language)
March 23 2023: Georgia (District Court Injunction 8/21/23)
March 29 2023: Kentucky (District Court Injunction 6/28/23; injunction lifted 7/14/2023)
March 29 2023: West Virginia (SAFE Act language; surgery ban; minimum hormone therapy and blockers allowed with parental approval and medical endorsements in order to prevent self-harm)
April 4 2023: Idaho (A V-CAP Act)
April 5 2023: Indiana (District Court Injunction 6/16/23)
April 19 2023: North Dakota
April 28 2023: Montana (Just FACTs Act language)
May 1 2023: Oklahoma
May 17 2023: Florida (with onerous restrictions on all gender affirming care making it effectively banned for most adults)
June 2 2023: Texas (District Court Injunction 8/25/23)
June 7 2023: Missouri
July 19 2023: Louisiana
August 16, 2023: North Carolina
2023 August 17: The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the preliminary injunction against Idaho’s 2020 version of the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which, if not enjoined, would prevent trans girls from participating on girls sports teams in schools.
2023 August 21: The US District Court of the Northern District of Georgia granted a preliminary Injunction against Georgia’s gender affirming care ban for minors.
2023 August 22: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the injunction placed by an Alabama District Court in May 2022 against Alabama’s version of the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, allowing it to go into effect and blocking gender affirming care for those under 18 in that state.
2023 August 24: State of sports law and policy as applied to trans athletes, state by state as of date of publication.
2024 Legislature:
2024 January 2: Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, having on 12/29/23 vetoed 2023’s HB 68, a combination SAFE Act and Save Women’s Sports bill, wrote an executive order barring gender affirming surgeries for minors and placing various additional counseling and reporting requirements on adult care. The veto was overridden on January 10. The status of gender affirming care bans for minors are now as follows:
April 6, 2021: Arkansas (Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act) (Struck down by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals 6/20/23)
March 29, 2022: Arizona (GAC Surgery ban for minors)
April 6 2022: Alabama (Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection (V-CAP) Act) (District Court injunction vacated by 11th Circuit Court of Appeals 8/21/23)
Jan 28 2023: Utah
Feb 14 2023: South Dakota
Feb 28 2023: Mississippi (Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures (REAP) Act; uses both SAFE Act and Just FACTs Act language)
March 2 2023: Tennessee (District Court Injunction 6/28/23; lifted by 6th Circuit Court of Appeals 7/8/23)
March 16, 2023: Arkansas (again; this time a Just FACTS Act)
March 22 2023: Iowa (SAFE Act language)
March 23 2023: Georgia (District Court Injunction 8/21/23)
March 29 2023: Kentucky (District Court Injunction 6/28/23; injunction lifted 7/14/2023)
March 29 2023: West Virginia (SAFE Act language; surgery ban; minimum hormone therapy and blockers allowed with parental approval and medical endorsements in order to prevent self-harm)
April 4 2023: Idaho (A V-CAP Act)
April 5 2023: Indiana (District Court Injunction 6/16/23)
April 19 2023: North Dakota
April 28 2023: Montana (Just FACTs Act language)
May 1 2023: Oklahoma
May 17 2023: Florida (with onerous restrictions on all gender affirming care making it effectively banned for most adults)
June 2 2023: Texas (District Court Injunction 8/25/23)
June 7 2023: Missouri
July 19 2023: Louisiana
August 16, 2023: North Carolina
January 10, 2024: Ohio (SAFE Act)
I have another version of this that I upkeep more regularly.
The Trump administration put forth many anti-trans policies via executive order or through policy aligned with such.
June 18, 2025: U.S. v. Skrmetti. was decided by SCOTUS.