17 Anti-Trans Bills That Could Become Law Next

In February, the Charlotte, North Carolina, city council voted 7-4 on a bill extending protection against discrimination to gay and transgender people; among other things, the measure made it possible for individuals to use the bathroom that matches their gender.

Gov. Pat McCrory immediately condemned the vote, warning it could “create major public safety issues.” He threatened to call an emergency session of the state legislature, and on Wednesday state legislators made good on that promise, passing a bill that offers state-level protections of race, religion, color, national origin and biological sex, but which specifically excludes sexual orientation and gender identity. McCrory signed the sweeping anti-LGBT legislation into law the same day.

North Carolina is not an outlier. More than 115 anti-LGBT bills were introduced in 2015, according to the Human Rights Campaign. A number of those bills are still pending; most were “religious refusal” bills like the Georgia legislation that Hollywood power players were threatening to boycott the state over before the bill was vetoed this week.

At present, there are 17 anti-transgender bills sitting before ten state legislatures.

Illinois
HB 4474, introduced on January 20th, would require the state’s school boards to designate bathrooms, locker rooms and sleeping quarters “for exclusive use of pupils of only one sex.”

Kentucky
HB 364, introduced on February 8th, would require “students born male to use only those facilities designated to be used by males and students born female to use only those facilities designated to be used by females” and would “identify consequences for using facilities designated for the opposite biological sex.”

Minnesota
SB 3002, introduced March 21st, would amend the state’s Human Rights Act. Specifically, it would prohibit trans or genderqueer individuals from using a bathroom that matches their gender. The bill provides that “no claim of nontraditional identity or ‘sexual orientation’ may override another person’s right of privacy based on biological sex in such facilities as restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, and other similar places, which shall remain reserved for males or females as they are biologically defined.”

Missouri
HB 1624, introduced January 6th, would require school districts “to designate bathrooms and other facilities as for the exclusive use of individuals of one sex and to prohibit individuals from accessing facilities that do not correspond to their sex.”

SB 720, introduced the same day, would require that “all school restrooms, locker rooms, and shower rooms accessible for use by multiple students shall be designated for and used by male or female students only.” The bill adds that the “best available accommodations” should be made for genderqueer students — e.g., “single-stall restrooms, access to unisex restrooms, or controlled use of faculty restrooms.”

Mississippi
HB 1523, the “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act,” which passed the Mississippi House on February 24th, explicitly codifies a person’s “immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.”