Friday was the bill filing deadline for Texas’ 2025 legislative session, and Equality Texas’ Interim Executive Director Brad Pritchett today issued a fundraising message warning the state’s LGBTQ community that “we have reached a grim milestone:”
As of Monday, March 15, 205 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills have been filed in the Texas legislature, Pritchett noted. That is, he said, the highest number ever recorded in Texas, surpassing the previous record of 141 bills filed in 2023.
“This is a distinction no Texan should be proud of,” Pritchett wrote. “These bills target our community’s basic rights and freedoms, from healthcare access to education to simply being able to live our lives with dignity. They aim to marginalize LGBTQIA+ Texans and erase our existence from public life.”
Pritchett pointed to Equality Texas’ efforts so far in 2025 which include hosting 30 advocacy training sessions across the state and training more than 1,000 advocates to mobilize at the Capitol, launching the largest pro-transgender TV ad campaign in Texas history, conducting more than 30 issue briefings on LGBTQ rights with legislators and stakeholders and organizing the “largest LGBTQIA+ advocacy day in Texas history.”
Pritchett said that while Equality Texas knows such strategies work, “we need your support to implement them, effectively … . The sheer volume of anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation means we must redouble our efforts.”
Ohio’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors is unconstitutional and should be tossed out, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.
The three-judge panel on the Tenth District Court of Appeals overturned a decision by a Franklin County judge that allowed the law to take effect last year. The GOP-controlled Legislature voted in early 2024 to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of House Bill 68, but advocates quickly sued on behalf of two transgender girls and their families.
“It is difficult to understand why our legislature believes adults are equipped to make decisions about gender-affirming medical care for themselves but not for their minor children,” Judge Carly Edelstein wrote in the decision.
House Bill 68 prevents doctors from prescribing hormones, puberty blockers or gender reassignment surgery before patients turn 18. It also bans transgender girls and women from playing on female school sports teams, although the lawsuit didn’t target that piece of it.
The law allows Ohioans younger than 18 who already receive hormones or puberty blockers to continue, as long as doctors determine stopping the prescription would cause harm. It does not ban talk therapy, but mental health providers must get permission from at least one parent or guardian to diagnose and treat gender dysphoria.
The American Civil Liberties Union argued the law violates the right of transgender Ohioans to choose their health care under the Ohio Constitution.
“The state’s ban is discriminatory, baseless and a danger to the well-being of the same Ohioan youth lawmakers claim to want to protect,” said Harper Seldin, an attorney for the ACLU. “It’s also part of a sweeping effort to drive trans people out of public life altogether by controlling our health care, our families and our lives.”
Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, who is running for governor in 2026, pledged to appeal the decision.
A federal judge on Tuesday indefinitely blocked implementation of President Trump’s executive order effectively barring transgender people from serving openly in the military, a stark blow to the administration’s efforts to curb transgender rights.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, an appointee of former President Biden, barred Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other military officials from implementing Trump’s order or otherwise putting new policy into place effectuating it. She also said the plaintiffs’ military statuses must remain unchanged until further order of the court.
The judge said her order intends to “maintain the status quo” of military policy regarding transgender service that existed before Trump signed the order titled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.” She stayed her order until Friday to give the administration time to appeal.
“The Court knows that this opinion will lead to heated public debate and appeals,” Reyes wrote in her opinion. “In a healthy democracy, both are positive outcomes.”
Six active service members and two individuals seeking to enlist in the military sued the Trump administration soon after the Jan. 27 order was signed, asserting it violates their constitutional rights. Two similar lawsuits are moving through the courts.
Trump’s order suggests that transgender people cannot “satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service” because they threaten the lethality of the armed forces and undermine unit cohesion, an argument long used to keep marginalized communities from serving.
“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” the executive order states.
Reyes wrote in her opinion that the president has both the power and obligation to ensure military readiness but noted that leaders of the armed forces have long used that justification to “deny marginalized persons the privilege of serving.”
“‘[Fill in the blank] is not fully capable and will hinder combat effectiveness; [fill in the blank] will disrupt unit cohesion and so diminish military effectiveness; allowing [fill in the blank] to serve will undermine training, make it impossible to recruit successfully, and disrupt military order,’” Reyes wrote.
“First minorities, then women in combat, then gays filled in that blank,” she continued. “Today, however, our military is stronger and our Nation is safer for the millions of such blanks (and all other persons) who serve.”
A 2016 RAND Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon found that allowing trans individuals to serve in the military had no negative impact on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness or readiness.
During several hearings across multiple weeks, Reyes tore into Justice Department lawyers over Trump’s order and Hegseth’s policy effectuating it, which was set to go into effect on March 26.
A Department of Defense memo dated Feb. 26 said individuals with a “current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria” are not fit for military service. It added that the Pentagon recognizes only two sexes, male and female, in compliance with another Trump executive order, and requires service members to “only serve in accordance with their sex.”
Reyes noted that symptoms of gender dysphoria could “mean anything,” from “cross-dressing” to mental health conditions like depression, which are also common among members of the military who do not identify as transgender.
“How can I say that a policy is limited, when on its own terms, it could include almost any transgender person?” the judge asked Justice Department lawyers during a March 13 hearing.
Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer Jason Manion argued that judges must accede to the “current” military, not those under the leadership of past administrations.
“You defer to the military,” he said. “You do not reassess the evidence they are doing.”
Nonetheless, the judge questioned the Defense Department’s use of “cherry-picked” studies to back up its new policy, which she said were “totally, grossly” misrepresented by Hegseth.
In her ruling Tuesday, Reyes pointed to that lack of evidence as reason to take a different course.
“Yes, the Court must defer,” the judge wrote. “But not blindly.”
At an earlier hearing last month before Hegseth’s policy was announced, Reyes sparred with DOJ lawyer Jason Lynch over the breadth of Trump’s order, suggesting it amounted to “unadulterated animus” backed up by little evidence.
She directed Lynch to sit down and purported she would ban all graduates of the University of Virginia School of Law — his alma mater — from appearing before her because they’re “liars” and “lack integrity,” terms mimicking Trump’s executive order.
“Is that animus?” she asked, calling Lynch back to the podium.
Following that hearing, the Justice Department filed a complaint against Reyes accusing her of misconduct. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, claimed the judge sought to “embarrass” Lynch with her hypothetical scenario.
Another seven transgender service members, backed by two LGBTQ civil rights organizations, are challenging Trump’s order on transgender troops in a separate lawsuit filed earlier this month in Washington state. Two more active-duty members challenged the order in a suit filed Monday in New Jersey.
In a statement, Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, one of the groups representing the plaintiffs at the center of Reyes’s ruling, said Tuesday’s decision “speaks volumes.”
“The Court’s unambiguous factual findings lay bare how this ban specifically targets and undermines our courageous service members who have committed themselves to defending our nation. Given the Court’s clear-eyed assessment, we are confident this ruling will stand strong on appeal,” Levi said.
In a shocking turn of events, Republican House representatives in Montana decided to cross the aisle and vote against two anti-transgender bills, following powerful speeches delivered by transgender Reps. Zooey Zephyr and SJ Howell.
President Donald Trump has made his opposition to LGBTQ+ rights very clear, and as a result, Republicans and even some Democrats have felt emboldened to push anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment. Republican legislators in numerous states have proposed bills targeting trans people, and GOP-dominated states like Montana are no exception.
On March 6, day 47 in Montana’s 69th Legislature, lawmakers debated nearly 250 bills, including ones targeting the trans population, which Republican representatives largely supported, with some notable exceptions.
House Bill 675, sponsored by Rep. Caleb Hinkle (R), would ban drag performances and Pride parades in Montana. Hinkle proposed it in response to a previous drag ban he sponsored being struck down by the courts after it was used against a trans woman who was not a drag artist to prevent her from speaking at a library event.
To circumvent this ruling, Rep. Hinkle proposed granting individuals the private right to sue drag performers rather than relying on state enforcement. Hinkle called being transgender “a fetish” during committee hearings.
Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) took to the floor and gave an impassioned speech in response.
“At its very core, drag is art. It is very beautiful art. It has a deep history in this country, and it is important to my community. You know, if you are a woman in this body wearing a suit today, you are in some way challenging gender norms that existed long ago,” she said.
“There were three-article-of-clothing laws 50 years ago that said if you wore three articles of clothing that were indicative of the opposite gender, they could stop you, arrest you,” she continued. “It was those laws that led to the police raiding an LGBTQ+ bar that led to the Stonewall riots, one of the most important civil rights moments in my community’s history.”
She added, “The sponsor … said this bill is needed… and I quote his words… ‘because transgenderism is a fetish based on crossdressing.’ And I am here to stand before the body and say that my life is not a fetish. My existence is not a fetish. I was proud a month ago to have my son up in the gallery here. Many of you on the other side met him. When I go to walk him to school, that’s not a lascivious display. That is not a fetish. That is my family. This is what these bills are trying to come after… not obscene shows in front of children; we have the Miller test for that, we have laws for that. This is a way to target the trans community, and that is in my opinion, and in the speaker’s own words.”
In a surprising turn of events, Rep. Sherry Essmann (R) rose to Rep. Zephyr’s defense, chastising the bill’s sponsor for using parental rights as his argument for bringing this bill into law, pointing out that such a bill would impede on the rights of parents such as Rep. Zephyr, and that representatives who support parents’ rights should vote against this bill.
In Rep. Essmann’s own words, “I’m speaking as a parent and a grandmother. And I’m very emotional because I know the representative in seat 20 is also a parent. No matter what you think of that, she is doing her best to raise a child. I did my best to raise my children as I saw fit, and I’m taking it for granted that my children are going to raise my grandchildren as they see fit,”
Following these two speeches, 13 Republican representatives voted against the bill.
This turn of events would’ve been remarkable in its own right, but this wasn’t the only occurrence of aisle-crossing on trans issues this session.
House Bill 754, if passed, would’ve had even more devastating consequences. The measure would’ve allowed the state to remove transgender children from their parents.
Rep. SJ Howell (D) took the floor to argue against the passing of the bill. Rep. Howell, who is non-binary, pointed out the vagueness of what the bill defines as a transgender child as it could mean a child who does anything that defies conventional gender norms, such as having a certain haircut or trying out a new nickname.
“Transitioning gender is not defined in this bill… so what does that mean? Maybe it means, as the sponsor said, surgery or medical treatment. Maybe it means therapy, mental healthcare. Maybe it means a kid who gets a haircut and a new set of clothes. Maybe a name change… a legal name change, or someone who wants to try out a different name… a strict reading of this bill could include all of that,” Howell said.
Rep. Howell further drove their point that the decision for the state to intervene in the removal of a child is a serious matter that holds a great deal of weight. They urged lawmakers to keep that in mind and consider the real consequences.
“Put yourself in the shoes of a [Child Protective Services] worker who is confronted with a young person, 15 years old maybe, who is happy… healthy… living in a stable home with loving parents, who is supported and has their needs met? And they are supposed to remove that child from their home and put them in the care of the state? We should absolutely not be doing that,” they said.
The bill went to a vote; this time, the Montana Republican party was fully fractured on the matter with 29 Republican representatives voting nay, killing the bill with a majority vote from all representatives.
When discussing the results of these two decisions, Rep. Zephyr took to Bluesky, where in a post she typed, “These kind of votes are born out of trans representation in government.”
A few blogs ago we broke news about Expatsi’s Move Abroad Conference. Now we have a podcast to share with you between FleeRedStates’s Bob and Expatsi’s Jen. Don’t forget to get that conference info and discounts by clicking here.
We’re heading into week #3 of the legislative session — and there’s a LOT happening. But reinforcements are on the way! Soon, we’ll be welcoming hundreds of volunteers to Tallahassee for our Pride At The Capitol kick-off campaign on Tuesday and Wednesday — and we have a packed schedule! Multiple bad bills are moving through the legislative process, and it’s all hands on deck to fight back against them.
But that’s not all. Earlier this week, Jennifer Solomon — Equality Florida’s Parents and Families Support Manager and the President of Kaleidoscope PTA, which advocates for safe, supportive, and respectful learning environments for ALL students — joined parents from across the state in the Capitol for the Florida PTA’s Legislative Convention. The message from Kaleidoscope PTA was clear: we want policies that protect every student and respect every family.
Our ongoing Pride At The Capitol program is a crucial element of our goal to combat and minimize the impact of bad bills and prepare for legal challenges against any that are passed into law.
But this effort relies heavily on pro-equality supporters like YOU taking action. Your presence in Tallahassee, your stories, and your participation in committee hearings are crucial. We have a phenomenal group joining us in the Capitol next week, but we’re still signing folks up for the weeks beyond to stand with us on the front lines. Whether you can join us for a day or the entire week, find a time that works for you!
If you can’t join us in person, please consider a donation to help us get as many people to Tallahassee as possible. Every dollar counts!
Now, we’re going to take you through exactly what happened in Week #2, what’s still coming, and how you can take action.
What it does: These bills attempt to effectively End Citizen-Led Amendments that allow we the people to change the state constitution via statewide referendum. Florida already has some of the strictest requirements in the nation for citizen-led amendments, but this legislation imposes new and insurmountable barriers that put constitutional amendments even further out of reach and consolidate power toward politicians and away from the voters.
🚨Anti-Diversity In Local Government (HB 1571/SB 420)🚨
Sponsors: Sen. Clay Yarborough and Rep. Dean Black
What it does: These bills prohibit local governments from enacting DEI-related policies, ordinances, or resolutions, and can subject local officials who previously voted for them to removal from office. This outrageous state overreach censors local governments and restricts their ability to respond to community needs and priorities.
What’s coming: SB 420 has been scheduled for a vote in its first Senate Committee, Community Affairs, on Monday, March 17th at 4:00pm ET.
🚨Don’t Say Gay or Trans at Work 2.0 (HB 1495/SB 440)🚨
Sponsors: Sen. Stan McClain and Rep. Rachel Plakon
What it does: This bill enacts state regulations on pronoun use in public and certain private workplaces. It shields employees from accountability for anti-trans harassment and intentional misgendering, and prohibits the inclusion of a transgender or nonbinary gender option on any job application or related employment form. The bill also prohibits LGBTQ-related cultural competency training requirements for government workers.
What’s coming:SB 440 has been scheduled for a vote in its first Senate Committee, Governmental Oversight and Accountability, on Tuesday, March 18th at 3:30pm ET.
🚨Banning Diversity & Equity In State Agencies (HB 731/SB 1710)🚨
Sponsors: Sen. Nick DiCeglie and Rep. Lauren Melo
What it does: This legislation would defund DEI in state agencies and ban state contractors and grantees from using state funds for DEI; the House bill has additional anti-DEI measures for state boards and healthcare education.
What’s coming:SB 1710 has been scheduled for a vote in its first Senate Committee, Governmental Oversight and Accountability, on Tuesday, March 18th at 3:30pm ET.
We’re keeping up the pressure on lawmakers to support and co-sponsor these bills, and we need your help.
🏆 The Health Care Freedom Act (HB 823/SB 932) 🏆
Sponsors: Rep. Anna V. Eskamani and Sen. Shevrin Jones
Restores Reproductive Rights: Repeals Governor DeSantis’ 6-Week Abortion Ban, reinstating abortion access up until the start of the third trimester, in line with broader medical and legal standards.
Protects Medical Care For Transgender People: Eliminates restrictions on essential medical care for transgender individuals, ensuring access to treatments supported by leading medical authorities like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association.
🏆 Freedom to Learn Act (HB 811/SB 930) 🏆
Sponsors: Rep. Angie Nixon and Sen. Tracie Davis
Safeguards Academic Freedom: Repeals provisions of the Stop WOKE Act and the “Don’t Say LGBTQ” law, protecting the right to teach honest history, discuss systemic injustices, and fully address LGBTQ topics in educational settings.
Promotes Inclusive Education: Allows higher education institutions to fund DEI programs and activities on campus, and requires the inclusion of LGBTQ history in public education, alongside Holocaust education, African American history, and women’s contributions, and restricts book-banning practices by limiting who can raise objections to school materials to only parents of public school students.
Our public policy team has been reviewing hundreds of bills filed this legislative session. View our full legislative slate of priority bills Equality Florida supports and opposes.
Florida has been setting the example for bad policy that’s now being taken up at the federal level. Earlier this week, we held a virtual briefing with national partners to discuss ways we’re resisting attacks from the Trump Administration in the courts.
A New Hampshire man with a green card was detained by immigration officers at Logan Airport and is being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Donald W. Wyatt detention facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island.
Fabian Schmidt’s family said they are unsure of why he is being held. They said he has a recently renewed green card, and no active issues in court.
Schmidt had been visiting Luxembourg and flew back to the U.S. on Friday. His partner had gone to pick him up at Logan Airport, and waited four hours before calling authorities.
“It was just said that his green card was flagged,” said Astrid Senior, his mother. She said she didn’t hear from her son directly until Tuesday, when she learned he’d been hospitalized.
Senior described Schmidt being “violently interrogated” at Logan Airport for hours, and being stripped naked, put in a cold shower by two officials, and being put back onto a chair.
She said Schmidt told her immigration agents pressured him to give up his green card. She said he was placed on a mat in a bright room with other people at the airport, with little food or water, suffered sleep deprivation, and was denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression.
“He hardly got anything to drink. And then he wasn’t feeling very well and he collapsed,” said Senior.
He was transported by ambulance to Mass General Hospital. He didn’t know it at the time, but he also had influenza.
On Tuesday, Schmidt was transported to the regional headquarters for ICE in Burlington, Massachusetts, and then transferred to the Wyatt facility. The family, including his partner, who is a cardiologist in Nashua, have acquired attorneys and been working with the German consulate in hopes to have him released on bail.
Schmidt and his mother moved to the U.S. in 2007, and received green cards in 2008. He moved from California to New Hampshire in 2022.
Senior described her son as a hardworking electrical engineer with a partner and 8-year-old daughter who are both U.S. citizens.
“Fabian said to me that he feels he’s very fearful and is frightened,” said Senior.
Schmidt had a misdemeanor charge for having marijuana in his car in 2015, which his mother said was dismissed after laws changed in California around marijuana possession. He missed a hearing about the case in 2022 since a notice was never forwarded to his new address. Senior mentioned that Schmidt is successfully recovering from alcoholism, and had a DUI that he’s completely worked through and paid off from around ten years ago.
Can a green card holder be deported?
It’s a complicated question, but some protections exist.
Green cards grant foreign nationals the right to live and work in the U.S. as permanent residents. They’re valid for ten years and have to new renewed.
“Only the immigration judge can take away that green card. The Trump administration thinks that they can expand that and do some crazy things,” said Curtis Morrison, an immigration attorney in California with experience litigating against the Trump administration. “But the law as it is now — he needs to be able to appear before an immigration judge.”
The government has to initiate removal proceedings in immigration court, and an individual has the right to go before a judge to defend themselves and understand the government reasoning for the potential deportation.
“[It’s the] Immigration and Nationality Act — which describes different kinds of conduct or crimes that could trigger somebody with a green card being deported and put into court proceedings to have them deported,” said Gregory Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
The law doesn’t always require convictions for green card holders to be deported.
“There is a long list of behaviors, conduct and also crimes. If somebody’s been convicted of something that could make somebody deportable if they have a green card,” he said.
Chen hadn’t heard of other green card cases like Schmidt’s other than that of Palestinian and Syrian student activist Mahmoud Khalid in New York City, a green card holder who is currently detained due to his protest activity at Columbia University. In that case, attorneys are relying partially on First Amendment right of protest.
“We have seen a disturbing trend from the federal government to target people who have legal immigration status,” said Chen, including not just those who have green cards, but people with visas and varying legal statuses.
“Denying a green card holder admission on such a minor charge would be an extreme case, but it is possible under the law,” said Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer, immigration law professor at Cornell Law School of the pot possession charge and deportation.
The reasons a green card holder can be deported include many kinds of criminal convictions, even if those convictions are from a long time ago and even some very minor convictions. For marijuana convictions, a person is deportable unless the conviction is for possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana for one’s own use, she said. Otherwise, any controlled substances offense makes a green card holder deportable.
The North Dakota Senate on Thursday rejected a measure that would have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its landmark 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
A vote to approve would have made North Dakota the first state to make such an overture to the high court, after the state House passed the measure last month.
The resolution failed in a 16-31 Senate vote after about 10 minutes of debate.
Democratic Sen. Josh Boschee said in opposition, “I understand that this puts us all in a tough spot, but I ask you to think about who’s put in the toughest position with this resolution: the people of North Dakota who are the subject of the resolution … the gay and lesbian North Dakotans who did not ask to be the subject of this conversation, but the conversation was brought to us.”
Republican Sen. David Clemens supported the measure, saying that while the U.S. Constitution does not mention marriage, the North Dakota Constitution recognizes marriage as between a man and a woman. Clemens said he took an oath to uphold that document.
Several people in the gallery applauded when the measure’s defeat was announced.
Massachusetts-based MassResistance pushed the measure and ones in other states. The group called itself an “international pro-family group.” But it has been labeled an “anti-LGBTQ hate group” by the LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD.
Lawmakers in at least nine states have recently introduced measures to try to chip away at same-sex couples’ right to marry. Five of them, including North Dakota’s failed resolution, urge the Supreme Court to overturn its 2015 landmark same-sex marriage ruling.
*This is being reported by the Dallas Voice. A response by the Texas House LGBTQ Caucus is here.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ramped up his war on transgender Texans yet another notch today (Friday, March 14), issuing a “legal opinion” declaring that state district courts do not have the judicial authority to order governmental agencies to change the gender markers on a trans person’s government-issued identification documents to reflect their actual gender identity rather than their gender assigned at birth.
Paxton also instructed state agencies to “immediately correct any unlawfully altered driver’s licenses or birth certificates that were changed pursuant to such orders.”
Paxton’s “opinion” was issued in response to a request made last September by the Texas Department of Public safety, the state agency which issues driver’s licenses in this state. A summary of the “opinion” reads:
“The ‘judicial power’ endowed to district courts does not countenance ex parte orders directing state agencies to amend a person’s biological sex on driver’s licenses or birth certificates. The underlying proceedings are coram non judice, and the resulting orders are void. State agencies must immediately correct any unlawfully altered driver’s licenses or birth certificates that were changed pursuant to such orders.”
(Ex parte means “on one side only; by or for one party.” Coram non judice means “not before a judge,” or “before one not a judge.”)
What Paxton is saying, Skeen explained, is that courts have been issuing orders directing state agencies to change gender markers on official documents such as birth certificates and driver’s licenses “without the agency being a part of the case.”
But, she added, “Courts have the authority to issue court orders based on what they find given the facts in any given case. The state doesn’t need to be party to that case.”
Skeen continued, “A court order is part of what the judiciary gets to do — interpret the law. The legislature makes the law, and the executive branch [of which Paxton is a part in Texas] is supposed to enforce the law. When a court issues an order, that order [applies to] the executive branch, and that order is entitled to full faith and credit under the U.S. Constitution.”
That means, basically, that Texas is required to honor court orders issued in other states, with a very few exceptions.
“We know the attorney general’s opinion is non-binding. But we also know state agencies will try to comply with it. Nevertheless, his opinion — in my opinion — is wrong. He is choosing to issue a non-binding opinion that is contrary to many legal doctrines, including separation of powers.” Shelly Skeen, Lambda Legal South Central Region director
“We know the attorney general’s opinion is non-binding. But we also know state agencies will try to comply with it,” Skeen said. “Nevertheless, his opinion — in my opinion — is wrong. He is choosing to issue a nonbinding opinion that is contrary to many legal doctrines, including separation of powers.”
Ash Hall, policy and advocacy strategist on LGBTQIA+ rights for the ACLU of Texas, said in a written statement, “We condemn Ken Paxton’s misuse of his office to repeatedly target transgender Texans. Attorney general opinions are non-binding and cannot supersede court orders. State agencies have no authority to retroactively change anyone’s valid legal documents.
“If state agencies attempt to implement this non-binding opinion, it would be an unlawful waste of resources that will not hold up in court nor stand the test of time,” Hall said. “We should all have identity documents that match who we are as a matter of basic safety and Paxton cannot erase transgender Texans’ right to exist.”
“We condemn Ken Paxton’s misuse of his office to repeatedly target transgender Texans … State agencies have no authority to retroactively change anyone’s valid legal documents.” Ash Hall, policy and advocacy strategist on LGBTQIA+ rights for the ACLU of Texas
An ACLU of Texas spokesperson added that there “not much more we can comment on beyond that yet since we don’t know how they plan to enforce this.”
Skeen said that anyone who finds their government-issued IDs have been or are being changed should contact the Lambda Legal Help Desk or the ACLU of Texas as soon as possible. She also stressed that legal challenges are already moving through the courts, including Fowler et al v. Stitt et al which is currently pending before the U.S Supreme Court.
According to the website, Lambda Legal filed that lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma on behalf of three transgender people born in Oklahoma — Rowan Fowler, Allister Hall and one plaintiff identified by his initials C.R. — after Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt issued an executive order in late 2021 that other state officials have invoked in denying transgender people’s applications to correct their birth certificates. That order is a reversal of prior policy, which had permitted such corrections for years, the lawsuit says, arguing that the government’s actions violate equal protection, privacy and liberty under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the U.S. Constitution and that forcing transgender people through their birth certificates to identify with a sex that conflicts with who they are violates their free speech rights under the First Amendment.
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