In 2025, state laws will be more extreme as anti-trans laws become more extreme
This story was originally reported by Orion Rummler of The 19th, and republished through Rewire News Group’s partnership with The 19th News Network.
Since 2020, every new year has brought a new record of state bills attempting to roll back transgender rights. The majority of those bills have not been passed into law. LGBTQ+ activists continue to defeat most of the bills, despite the fact that the number of bills is increasing. Each year, Republicans bring forward more and more legislation. Each year, these bills– become broader and extreme as politicians try to find new ways to enforce the binary definition of gender. This escalation can be seen in those bills that pass. 1005 of these bills failed, and 54 became 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 by their ability to produce sperm. Women and girls can be defined as those who are able to produce eggs. The goal of these policies is to regulate gender. 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. The goal of these policies is to regulate gender. Five of these laws came into force this year, but none of them existed before 2023. These laws exempt trans and nonbinary individuals from protections against discrimination. 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. Idaho and Arkansas expanded the scope of their K-12 bathrooms bans this year to include colleges, jails and all government building. In 2024, Arkansas stopped issuing licenses with a gender-specific “X”. This year, Arkansas passed a law requiring that gender must be displayed on every license. 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. Iowa became the first state in the country to completely rescind nondiscrimination protections for trans people. According to Mark Stringer, Executive Director of the ACLU of Iowa, this law was a lifeline. These protections were in place since 2007 and were endorsed at that time by many Republican lawmakers. 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. This law will take effect on July 1, according to Keenan Crow, director of policy and advocacy at One Iowa, a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. 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 began my job nearly 12 years ago, I felt proud of the state. We were the third state to have marriage equality. 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. This is no longer the case.
“I would not recommend that trans people move here as their rights are literally being eroded,” they said.
In Texas where the legislative sessions ends on June 2, Republicans have introduced a law that would charge transgender individuals with a crime if they tell their employer or government about their gender. According to Chron, this bill hasn’t advanced in the Texas state legislature and would punish trans people with up to two years of prison time and a fine of $10,000 for “gender fraud.” 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. According to the New York Times, as of late April, a half dozen states had submitted bills to the Supreme Court asking them to overturn Obergefell V. Hodges. 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. According to the Associated Press, their frustration wasn’t limited to that bill. This year, Republican legislators prioritized and pushed anti-trans legislation like never before. These efforts included limiting Medicaid coverage for gender affirming care and canceling care for workers in state offices
.
This bill was not passed into law as Georgia’s session ended too early.In Maine, Gov. Janet Mills criticized President Donald Trump’s executive order that threatened federal funding to schools that allowed trans girls to play on girls’ teams. Mills fought back when Trump threatened to cut Maine’s state funding if it didn’t comply. She told Trump, “We’ll be seeing you in court,” during a White House gathering with governors, in February. The USDA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stopped funding while the Social Security Administration briefly cancelled contracts. ProPublica reports that all of this political pressure was applied over two transgender students competing in school sports. Early in May, Maine reached an agreement with Trump’s administration to restore funding to students for school meals. As state legislators in Montana debated a bill that would allow private citizens to bring lawsuits against drag performers, thirteen Republicans changed their vote after passionate speeches by Democrats, including the trans state representative Zooey Zephyr. The bill would have failed without the Republican votes. SJ Howell, a nonbinary state representative, gave a speech on the floor of the Montana House in opposition to HB 57, which would have allowed the state to take trans children from their parents custody if the child transitioned. The bill was defeated. In Wyoming, the Republican Governor allowed Wyoming’s sex-definition bill to become law, in part because he was opposed to the way the legislation was written. Mark Gordon wrote that the new law was “overstepping legislative authority” and “encroaching upon the role courts.” He could not sign it because the agenda of the bill “was different”. In May, five Pennsylvania Democrats supported a bill that would ban trans women and girls from participating in girls’ sports, 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. Trans people feel emboldened by the extreme bills being proposed. They are also stepping forward to say that they will not be erased. She said that we will remain visible despite these bills. Visibility is crucial. Visibility is a revolutionary act. She said, “It’s an act resistance.” It shows that they will not win.
