2000 June Culture Justice Remembering Our Dead honored at the GLAAD awards
2000 July Culture Justice Second Transgender Day of Remembrance announced on alt.transgendered and written about the following week.
2001 February Medical The HBIGDA published the sixth SOC.
2001 Legal Rhode Island adds gender identity as a protected class
2002 Legal The European Court of Human Rights in Goodwin & I v United Kingdom, rules that transgender people have the right to update the gender on their birth certificates, leading to the Gender Recognition Act of 2004
2002 Legal 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 Legal California, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania added gender identity as a protected class
2003 Legal 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
2003 Justice The National Center for Transgender Equality is founded as a Washington D.C. based lobbying group.
2004 Legal The US Sixth Circuit Court in Smith v. City of Salem rules 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.
2004 Justice First San Francisco Trans March held as part of Pride weekend, inspired in reaction to the murder of Gwen Araujo
2004 Culture Justice Monica Roberts begins writing her TransGriot.columns
2005 April Legal The Gender Recognition Act of 2004 goes into effect in the U.K. allowing people to change their legal gender by being evaluated by a Gender Recognition Panel and then being issued a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) and an amended birth certificate, reflecting their thus recognized gender. This still allowed discrimination on the basis of transgender status by the Church of England, sports organizations, employers, and private organizations. Courts had permission to disclose a person’s transgender status. It is widely criticized by trans people as being overly cumbersome and that the evaluation process is inherently inhumane gatekeeping.
2005 Legal Maine added gender identity as a protected class as a subset of sexual orientation.
2005 and 2008: Legal 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 Legal Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington add gender identity as a protected class
2006 Culture Lana Wachowski, co-writer and co-director of The Matrix film series, is outed as being a trans woman by her lover’s ex, himself a trans man.
2006 Medical The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association was renamed the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)
2007 Legal Colorado, Iowa, Oregon, and Vermont add gender identity as a protected class.
2007 Culture Whipping Girl, Julia Serano
2007 Justice The Human Rights Commission, one of the U.S.’s larger LGBT rights lobbying groups, decided to drop pushing for including gender identity in ENDA, the proposed federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a move which many in the transgender community saw as throwing trans folks under the bus. Sen. Barney Frank (D-MA) splits off the trans protections from the LGB protections into its own bill, claiming that it wouldn’t pass as a unified bill. Donna Rose, the HRC’s first and then only transgender board member, resigned in protest
2008 Justice Medical The DSM V is being prepared and is eventually published in 2013. Trans rights activists advocate for depathologizing transgender status and removing the diagnosis of gender identity disorder. They also protest the inclusion of Ray Blanchard in the subcommittees on gender and sexuality.
2008 Justice GenderPAC closed in 2008/9, its leaders' reasoning that NCTE and increasing trans inclusion in other queer groups rendered it pointless.
2008 May Legal 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.
2009 March 31 Justice International Transgender Day of Visibility started by Rachel Crandall on March 31, as a more upbeat celebration of transgender people in contrast to Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20, which has a memorial and anti-violence focus.
2009 April Legal In Colorado, Angie Zapata’s murderer becomes the first person in the U.S. convicted of a hate crime against a transgender victim because of their transgender status. Zapata had been beaten to death by him in July 2008.
2009 June 9 Medical In the United States, The Endocrine Society published clinical practice guidelines “for the treatment of transsexual persons” which included the use of GnRH puberty blockers for trans youth starting at the onset of puberty with Tanner stage 2, increasing how broadly they were prescribed. These guidelines also included beginning hormone therapy at age 16.
2009 June 11 Culture Chaz Bono came out as a trans man
2009 October 28 Legal Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act added gender, sexual orientation, disability, and actual or perceived gender and gender identity to classes that can be considered under federal hate crimes. It went into effect in 2010.