Since 2020, every new year has brought a new record of state bills attempting to roll back transgender rights. Most of that legislation has not become law. Even as the sheer volume of bills continues to grow, LGBTQ+ advocates continue to defeat the majority of them. But each year, Republicans introduce more and more bills. And each year, those bills become broader and more extreme, as politicians look for new ways to enforce a binary definition of gender — and that escalation is turning up in the bills that do pass. 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is tracking 575 anti-LGBTQ+ state bills so far this year, most of which target transgender people. One hundred and five of those bills have failed and 54 have passed into law. Those newly passed laws include restrictions on trans students’ ability to use school restrooms or play school sports, Pride flag bans on government property, gender-affirming care restrictions, and bans on updating personal identity documents like driver’s licenses and birth certificates. 

Many of these laws define sex in ways that exclude trans and intersex people. Men and boys are defined as people who can produce sperm. Women and girls are defined as people who can produce eggs. Sex is defined in terms of reproductive capacity, with some exceptions for developmental or genetic anomalies that prevent having children. Throughout these different policies, regulating gender is a central goal.

As summer draws near and more state legislative sessions come to an end, The 19th is tracking the emerging trends, firsts and surprises this year as statehouse Republicans brought a record-breaking number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills.

How anti-trans laws are evolving

Republicans have become more explicit in trying to create legal distinctions between men and women based on their characteristics at birth — in the name of protecting women’s-only spaces or defining what a woman is. Now, 15 states strictly define sex based on reproductive anatomy, chromosomes or hormones. None of these laws were in place prior to 2023, and five of them went into effect this year. These laws exclude trans and nonbinary people from state nondiscrimination protections. They also have the potential to embolden public scrutiny and discrimination of women who don’t fit into traditional gender roles.

Nineteen states now ban transgender people from using bathrooms that match their gender identity in various government-owned buildings, including K-12 schools, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks LGBTQ+ policy. Several of the most far-reaching bans, which restrict access to bathrooms in public places like libraries, museums and colleges, were passed this year in states including Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming. 

Meanwhile, Republicans in other states want to expand pre-existing policies. This year, Idaho and Arkansas widened the scope of their K-12 bathroom bans to apply to colleges, jails and all government buildings. And while Arkansas had already stopped issuing driver’s licenses with an “X” gender marker in 2024, the state passed a law this year to require that gender be displayed on all licenses. In March, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued in a nonbinding opinion that driver’s licenses and birth certificates previously updated for transgender Texans via court orders should be reverted back to reflect sex assigned at birth.

Over time, the anti-trans bills that do make it into law are becoming more severe, said Logan Casey, director of policy research at the Movement Advancement Project. 

“Especially now with the Trump administration signalling very strongly, throughout the campaign and since inauguration, that attacking transgender people is one of their top priorities, it’s no surprise to me that state electeds continue prioritizing this in their own efforts,” Casey said. 

Notable bills and firsts

This year, Iowa became the first state in the country to completely rescind nondiscrimination protections for trans people. The Iowa Civil Rights Act previously protected trans people against discrimination in employment, housing, credit and lending, public accommodations and education. The law was a lifeline for many people, according to ACLU of Iowa Executive Director Mark Stringer. Now, those protections have been stripped from the state code. They had been in place since 2007 and were endorsed at that time by many Republican lawmakers. 

Iowa’s new law also bans updates to gender markers on birth certificates and bans schools from teaching students about LGBTQ+ identities from kindergarten through sixth grade. It goes into effect on July 1. This moment was years in the making, according to Keenan Crow, director of policy and advocacy at One Iowa, a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. 

The political environment for trans people in the state has been bad and getting worse, as many Republican moderates have been replaced with extremists who want to embrace culture war issues, Crow said. 

“It’s escalated from things like the ‘don’t say gay, don’t say trans’ stuff and the book bans all the way up to removing an entire class of people from the Civil Rights Act,” they said. “When I started this job almost 12 years ago, I was really proud of our state. We were one of the first states to add gender identity as a protected class. We were the third state for marriage equality.” 

For years, Iowa had been a good place for transgender people to live freely without facing much discrimination or political scrutiny, Crow said. It’s no longer that way. 

“I wouldn’t anymore recommend that trans folks move here because their rights are being eroded, literally, as we speak,” they said. 

In Texas, where the legislative session ends on June 2, Republicans introduced a bill that would charge transgender people with a felony if they inform their employer or the government about their gender identity. This bill, which has not advanced through the state legislature, would subject trans people to up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine for the crime of “gender identity fraud,” according to the Houston news site Chron.

This legislation marks a dramatic escalation of Republican lawmakers’ attempts to criminalize being transgender in America. Medical providers in six states face felony charges for providing gender-affirming care to minors, and in two states — Utah and Florida — it is a criminal offense for trans people to use bathrooms that match their gender identity in certain circumstances. 

Notably, 2025 has also marked a return of states attempting to overturn marriage equality. As of late April, half a dozen states had introduced bills asking the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, according to the New York Times. Marriage equality, or same-sex marriage, has been viewed as morally acceptable by most Americans for years, per Gallup. 

Democrats’ resistance and Republican defections

In response to a bill that would ban state spending on gender-affirming care for trans prisoners, Georgia Democrats organized a mass walkout in April. The frustration that fueled their walkout wasn’t just about that bill, according to the Associated Press: This year, Republican lawmakers pushed and prioritized anti-trans bills like never before. Those efforts included restricting Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care and rescinding care for state workers. That bill did not become law, as Georgia’s legislative session ended early. 

One of the most public signs of Democratic resistance to anti-trans policies played out in Maine, as Gov. Janet Mills challenged President Donald Trump over his executive order threatening federal funding for schools that allow trans girls on girls’ teams. When Trump personally threatened to cut state funding if Maine didn’t comply with the order, Mills dug in. “We’ll see you in court,” she told Trump during a White House meeting with governors in February. 

In response, the Trump administration brought the hammer down: The Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture all opened investigations into Maine’s university system and state education department, ProPublica reports. The USDA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration halted funding, while the Social Security Administration briefly canceled contracts. The Justice Department threatened to sue.

All of that political pressure was exerted over two transgender girls competing in school sports, per ProPublica. In early May, the state reached an agreement with the Trump administration to restore some funding for Maine’s students to have access to school meals.  

There have also been signs of Republican opposition to anti-trans policies this year. In March, as state legislators in Montana considered a bill to allow private citizens to sue drag performers, 13 Republicans flipped their votes following impassioned speeches from Democrats, including trans state Rep. Zooey Zephyr. Without those Republican votes, the bill failed. Another Montana bill, which would allow the state to remove trans kids from their parents’ custody if they transition, was defeated after nonbinary state Rep. SJ Howell gave a floor speech in opposition to the bill. Twenty-nine Republicans flipped their votes.

In Wyoming, the Republican governor allowed the state’s sex definition bill to become law without his signature — which, he explained in a statement, was due in part to his opposition to how the legislation was drafted. 

In his letter to Wyoming’s secretary of state, Gov. Mark Gordon said that the law “oversteps legislative authority and encroaches upon the role of the courts.” Unlike previous bills he signed into law that banned trans people from using bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity, this new law “has a different agenda,” he wrote — one that he could not put his signature behind. This law “does not provide clear direction on how it would improve current policies or enforcement, nor does it outline any specific issues it seeks to resolve,” he said. 

Ceding ground

In May, five Pennsylvania Democrats voted in support of a bill to ban trans girls and women from girls’ sports in kindergarten through college. Their breakaway votes reflect a small but growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers ceding ground on trans rights — particularly when it comes to sports — following Trump’s re-election. 

Some lawmakers, like Democratic state Sen. Paul Sarlo in New Jersey, have plainly said that they believe trans women should be banned from women’s sports. Others have spoken more generally — California Gov. Gavin Newsom is one of the most high-profile Democrats to argue that trans women competing in women’s sports is “deeply unfair.” These comments were all made as part of discussions of how Democrats can better appeal to voters. 

How trans advocates are looking forward

Joelle Bayaa-Uzuri Espeut of the Normal Anomaly Initiative, one of the nation’s leading Black LGBTQ+ nonprofits headquartered in Texas, said that anxiety, uncertainty and confusion are rampant in response to the extreme political attacks seen this year. But trans people are also feeling emboldened to fight back, she said. 

“With these extreme bills that are being proposed, trans people and our allies are standing up and stepping up and saying, we won’t be erased. We will still be visible, regardless of these proposed bills,” she said.

To Espeut, visibility is an antidote to fear.

“We’re being threatened just by making our identity a felony. Visibility is key. Visibility is an act of revolution. It’s an act of resistance,” she said. “It is showing that they are not going to win.”