A recent storm of legislation targets the pretty legal status of trans people, leaving LGBTQ+ advocates in every state with the repercussions.
According to an evaluation from the Transformations Project, a grassroots volunteer monitoring anti-trans policy, over 35 costs have been introduced in 2024 that aim to outlaw transgender people from public life. These right-wing costs are primarily intended to amend existing laws ( or introduce new people ) to redefine sex based on biological characteristics, excluding transgender and gender nonconforming individuals. This kind of policy would prevent trans people from using public facilities, locker rooms, and changing locations, as well as accessing domestic violence homes and updating their identification documents.
In addition, the bills would essentially mandate that transgender nonbinary individuals get misdiagnosed before moving around the world. Additionally, this legislation appears to be an early attempt to squander constitutional protections that are already in place for trans people. LGBTQ+ advocates think the goal is to undermine the gains made in the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that sexual orientation and gender identity are protected by the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s broad definition of” sex.” By redefining what that term means at the provincial level, lawmakers probably have the ability to limit the scope of that choice, thereby slowing the LGBTQ+ justice group’s rate.
Mississippi and Oklahoma are currently in the lead among the 19 states that have passed similar policy. At least five different proposals submitted to the government of each state seek to reinvent the use of the word” sex” to speak to one’s “biological sex at birth.” For example, HB 1449 in Oklahoma defines the term “female” as “any natural man whose natural reproductive system is developed to make egg” and states that any person whose “biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a feminine” is defined as “any natural person whose natural reproductive system is developed to make ova.” The legislation also goes onto redefine other gendered terms, such as “man”, “woman”, “boy”, “girl”, “mother”, and “father”, in ways that intentionally exclude mention of the lived realities of trans people.
Some of these bills are rapidly advancing through their statehouses: Mississippi’s HB 1607 has already passed its House of Representatives, and Alabama’s HB 111 is likely headed for a House vote within the coming weeks following favorable notices in committee hearings. These proposals, which are virtually identical to one another, also go out of their way to legally erase intersex people. Their respective bill texts state that “individuals with differences in sex development, also known as’ DSDs’ or ‘ intersex conditions,’ are not a third sex”.
The heteronormative framing of these bills also makes sense, according to Jose Vazquez, communications director for the ACLU of Alabama. This could have a significant impact on LGBTQ+ people and those whose bodies do n’t abide by those standards. For example: Is a gay man not fertilizing an ova then a lesser man, legally speaking? Vazquez believes the open questions left unanswered by HB 111 are “fully intentional”.
