A flurry of anti-trans bills kick off many new legislative sessions

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In state capitols nationwide, a barrage of proposals to limit the rights of transgender people are advancing in conservative legislatures even after those kinds of measures fell flat with voters last fall.

Just three weeks into the new year, there are at least 300 viable anti-LGBTQ bills being considered by state lawmakers, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, including those that were held over from last year but can still be acted on.

“Last year was by far the worst year on record that we’ve seen” for anti-LGBTQ legislation, said Rose Saxe, the deputy project director at the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, noting that 500 measures were introduced across the country last year, and more than 80 became law. “This year is not feeling better. Things are already feeling aggressive in the speed in which legislatures are taking up these issues.”

The influx of anti-trans bills, in particular, is jarring, given that Republicans who campaigned on restricting trans rights—such as Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Daniel Cameron and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin who sought Republican majorities in the state legislature—were unsuccessful in last November’s elections.

“What you’re seeing play out,” said Brandon Wolf, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, “is a tug-of-war between the will of the American people and this faction of right-wing extremists who are desperate to use government as a weapon to control the rest of society.”

Wolf said proponents of the anti-LGBTQ legislation often describe their interests as protecting children, but now their proposals go far beyond that. A few years ago, lawmakers in Florida wanted to bar transgender girls from youth sports, but that has led to bills pulling books about families with two moms from the shelves of school libraries.

“The agenda is always about the stripping away of freedom generally,” he said. “[They] get to tell you what to read. They get to tell you what health care you can access. They get to tell you what your family can look like or who you can be without fear of discrimination and violence. … It was never simply about one community. It was always about controlling all of us.”

Proposals that lawmakers are weighing this year include prohibitions of gender-affirming care for adults (not just youth), measures to require state documents like driver’s licenses to use a holder’s sex assigned at birth and restroom restrictions for all public buildings (not just schools).

Just last week, the Ohio House voted to override a gubernatorial veto of a sweeping measure that would, among other things, ban gender-affirming medical care—such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers—for transgender youth. Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, rejected the proposal in late December, explaining that gender-affirming care was “about protecting human life.” The measure would also ban transgender girls from playing girls’ sports.

Former President Donald Trump blasted DeWine for his veto. “The bill would have stopped child mutilation, and prevented men from playing in women’s sports. Legislature will hopefully overturn. Do it FAST!!!” Trump wrote on his social media site.

Ohio House members voted 65-28 to override DeWine’s objections, arguing that they were protecting children with the legislation. “It is hard to fathom that we live in a society that would tell children that they need drugs and scalpels to live their authentic lives,” said state Rep. Gary Click, a Republican who sponsored the legislation. The measure now goes back to the state Senate, which could take it up as early as next week.

In Florida this year, lawmakers have introduced proposals to criminalize “lewd or lascivious grooming,” prohibit government employees from having to use their colleagues’ preferred pronouns, and require manufacturers of smartphones and tablets to limit access to material that is “harmful to minors”—something advocates worry will be used to screen out material about LGBTQ people.

South Carolina is one of the few Southern states that does not already ban gender-affirming care for youth, but that may soon change. The House passed a broad measure Wednesday that would prevent teens in the state from receiving that kind of treatment as one of its first actions of the new year. The proposal would also block Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming therapies for anyone under 26 and require schools to disclose students’ transgender identity to their parents or guardians.

Pediatricians and parents pleaded with South Carolina lawmakers not to approve the measure. The ban would make it “even more torturous and virtually impossible to navigate” for families looking to treat their transgender children, Dr. Deborah Greenhouse, a pediatrician, told a House panel last week.

Only one witness supported the measure at the hearing: Matt Sharp, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has promoted anti-trans legislation in several states. Sharp, who appeared virtually, called the medical treatment “experimental procedures.”

Advocates crowded committee rooms in the Missouri Capitol this week, as a House panel there considered two anti-trans proposals. One would remove the expiration date of a law passed last year banning gender-affirming care for youth. The other would let doctors and other medical professionals object to offering gender-affirming care for both children and adults.

“Every American should have the freedom to operate according to their ethical and religious beliefs, and that includes doctors, nurses and other medical providers,” state Rep. Brad Hudson, the Republican sponsor of both measures, told his colleagues. “The Constitution protects their freedom as much as everyone else’s.”

Cassie Brown, the executive director of the Missouri chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, said the focus should be on the well-being of patients. “The reason why all of these ethical codes exist is because patients are in a more vulnerable situation,” she said, according to the Missouri Independent. “And gender-affirming care has been shown to reduce depression, anxiety and suicidality.”

A Utah committee quickly passed a bill that could have far-reaching impacts on transgender residents. The measure, sponsored by state Rep. Kera Birkeland, a Republican, could restrict access to bathrooms, locker rooms and even state-funded service like rape crisis centers. It would also require new buildings to have single-person restrooms and locker rooms.

Dozens of transgender Utahns spoke against the bill at the state Capitol and online. “They told lawmakers about their experiences dehydrating themselves to avoid using the restroom and stopping their cars under overpasses to avoid rest stops on road trips,” reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Alex Williams, a 15-year-old trans student, told lawmakers that transgender people were more likely to be sexually assaulted than cisgender people. Utah legislators, Williams said, are “punishing trans individuals for the crimes of cisgender people.”

The legislation would define a female as “an individual whose biological reproductive system is of the general type that functions to produce ova,” and a male as “an individual whose biological reproductive system is of the general type that functions to fertilize the ova of a female.”

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News to Use

Trends, Common Challenges, Cool Ideas, FYIs and Notable Events

• LAW ENFORCEMENT: “Unimaginable failure” in Uvalde police response. A near-total breakdown in policing protocols hindered the response to the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 people dead—and the refusal to rapidly confront the killer needlessly cost lives, the Justice Department concluded on Thursday after a nearly two-year investigation. The almost 600-page report, compiled from 260 interviews and 14,000 documents and videos, represents the most comprehensive assessment to date of a killing spree that helped spur passage of new federal gun control legislation. The main takeaway from the investigation, Attorney General Merrick Garland said, was that officers who respond to an active shooting scene need “to immediately enter the room to stop the shooter with whatever weapons and tools the officers have with them.”


• IMMIGRATION: Texas bus company sues Chicago for migrant restrictions. The lawsuit by a Texas transportation company filed earlier this month accuses the city of violating federal and state law with its ordinance that requires bus companies carrying asylum-seekers to get approval from the city before dropping off passengers at designated spots. The legal move continues a back-and-forth battle as Chicago works to control the arrivals of asylum-seekers and Texas adjusts to continue sending them. Nearly 35,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began sending buses in August 2022.


• INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS: Utah considers new model for opposing federal overreach. Utah’s elected officials are frequent opponents to what they say is federal overreach. The state is currently suing over a number of directives from the federal government. Now, a new bill gaining traction in the legislature could give Utah lawmakers an avenue to challenge federal policies, or at least not comply with them. The Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act would allow lawmakers to reject any action from the federal government they view as unconstitutional, unless a court rules otherwise. It’s an approach that, its sponsor says, no other state in the country has tried. On Thursday, the bill cleared its first hurdle on the Senate floor after a 19-6 vote, passing along party lines with Democrats in opposition.


• DATA PRIVACY: New Jerseyans can now opt out of online data collection. Consumers will have the right to opt out of their personal data being collected and sold in some instances under a new law opposed by business groups who say it will burden Garden State businesses and leave them vulnerable to lawsuits. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed the bill into law Tuesday. The law will also limit businesses to collecting only personal data that is relevant and necessary to their operation, and creates more stringent restrictions on collecting certain sensitive data about their customers, including racial origin; religious beliefs; mental or physical conditions, treatments, or diagnosis; gender identity; citizenship or immigration status; and precise geolocation date. Other states, including California, Delaware, Montana, Texas, Utah, and Virginia, have passed similar legislation.


• SOCIAL MEDIA: Utah Legislature plans to revise social media limits for youth. Republican lawmakers said on the opening day of the state’s 2024 legislative session that they will work to reinforce laws they passed last year requiring parental permission for kids to access social media apps. The two laws have been hit with multiple lawsuits challenging their constitutionality. They require age verification for anyone in the state who wants to create a social media account, which critics say could compromise users’ data security. The laws also give parents access to their children’s accounts and set a statewide social media curfew. With both laws set to take effect March 1, Republicans say they are prioritizing revisions to ensure the laws hold up in court. Meanwhile, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird in a lawsuit filed in a state court on Wednesday accused TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance of lying about the prevalence on its platform of content including drugs, nudity, alcohol and profanity.


• CAP AND TRADE: Voters could repeal Washington’s climate law. The fate of the state’s program to combat climate change will be in the hands of voters this November. The initiative, certified for the ballot on Tuesday, would undo the two-year-old Climate Commitment Act, which imposes annual limits on greenhouse gas emissions for major emitters and requires them to buy allowances at state auctions for each metric ton of their pollution. Washington raised $1.8 billion from allowance auctions last year. Revenue is designated for programs to cut pollution and respond to climate change. Critics contend the policy won’t significantly move the needle on climate change but is driving fuel, food and energy prices higher as companies pass the new expense onto consumers.


• CORRUPTION: Texas AG says he won’t contest facts in whistleblower case. Attorney General Ken Paxton sought Thursday to end the long-running whistleblower lawsuit against him—and avoid sitting for a deposition—by saying he would no longer contest the facts of the case and was prepared to accept any judgment. The move came after he appeared to exhaust his options to reverse a Travis County judge’s order that he and three top aides answer questions under oath. The all-GOP Texas Supreme Court ruled against Paxton on that issue last week. Paxton’s office portrayed Thursday's move as one that would finally put an end to a costly and distracting lawsuit, in which his former top deputies allege they were illegally fired for reporting the attorney general to law enforcement alleging abuses of office. But a lawyer for one of the whistleblowers said the lawsuit was “not over” and Paxton was just trying to delay it further.


• FINANCE: States consider expanding low-interest loan programs. From New York to Illinois to Montana, states have seen surging public interest in little-known programs that use state funds to spur private investment with bargain-priced loans. The programs have taken off after a series of key interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve made virtually all loans more expensive, whether for farmers purchasing seed or businesses wanting to expand. Under so-called linked-deposit programs, states deposit money in banks at below-market interest rates. Banks then leverage those funds to provide short-term, low-interest loans to particular borrowers, often in agriculture or small business or affordable housing development. The programs can save thousands of dollars for borrowers by reducing their interest rates by an average 2-3 percentage points.


• CLIMATE CHANGE: States are stripping local power to block green projects. Nationwide, at least 228 restrictions in 35 states have been imposed to stop green energy projects, according to a study by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. The conflicts have hindered many states’ aggressive timelines for transitioning to cleaner energy production, with the ultimate goal of eliminating carbon pollution within the next two decades. Michigan and more than a dozen other states are seeking to upend the decision-making process by grabbing the power to supersede local restrictions and allow state authorities to approve or disapprove locations for utility-scale projects. The shift has sparked a political backlash that may escalate as more states seek to simplify getting green energy projects approved and built.


• WORKFORCE: Bloomberg Philanthropies to pair hospitals and high schools. The nonprofit, via a new initiative, will pair high schools eager to expand career training with hospitals desperate for workers. Bloomberg Philanthropies has pledged to spend a total of $250 million in 10 cities, including Boston, over five years. Students will earn college credits as they train for careers in nursing, emergency medicine, lab science, medical imaging and surgery. In a nod to evolving views on higher education and to surging demand for vocational training, the program will prepare thousands of students to start full-time jobs upon graduation instead of attend college, if they choose.


• ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: Mississippi weighs incentives for EV battery plant. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves called a special session for legislators to consider $350 million in incentives for a proposed factory that would manufacture electric vehicle batteries and employ about 2,000 people. The Republican governor on Tuesday declined to name the company for now that plans to spend $1.9 billion to build the facility in northern Mississippi. It would be the second-largest corporate investment in state history. If the plant comes to fruition, it will add to a bevy of similar facilities materializing around the country. Ford is building EV battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee, and at a site near Savannah, Georgia, Hyundai is building its first U.S. factory devoted solely to EV production.

Picture of the Week

Washington, D.C.’s Metro is going viral on social media. On Wednesday, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which oversees Metro, launched a “Your 2023 Metro Report” that gives riders a detailed summary of their public transit use last year. The summary, condensed into a shareable screenshot akin to Spotify Wrapped, shows riders the frequency and total distance of their Metro trips, how many stations they visited, their most-used bus route, how much carbon dioxide emissions they saved by taking transit instead of driving and how they rank against other Metro riders. Over 31,000 riders accessed the Metro report website within its first 18 hours and thousands have shared their results on social media, according to Metro data. (2023 Metro Report courtesy of one of Route Fifty’s own reporters)

Government in Numbers

$1.75 billion

The amount in taxes and fees collected in New York state from mobile sports bets over the last two years. According to a statement from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, the $1.55 billion collected in taxes on bets is used “mostly” for education. An additional $200 million was collected in licensing fees. “Over the last two years, New York is the clear leader in providing responsible entertainment for millions while bringing in record-shattering revenue for education, youth sports and problem gambling prevention,” she said in that statement. New York ranks third in the U.S. in total dollars wagered, right behind New Jersey in the lead and runner-up Nevada.