South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden (R) signed two anti-trans bills into law on Friday, touting them as “South Dakota values bills.” In a press release announcing the signings, Rhoden proclaimed that “South Dakota has always stood for truth.”
“My Administration will continue to uphold the values that make our state strong, safe, and free,” he added. “These bills reflect our commitment to carry those values forward for future generations.”
The two anti-trans bills – HB 1184 and HB 1161 – respectively ban legal recognition of trans identities and require people in the state to use facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms based exclusively on sex assigned at birth.
Also on Friday, Rhoden signed three bills rolling back reproductive rights in the state. In a statement, he called South Dakota “the most pro-life state in America” with laws that “reflect the fact that an unborn child is a person – and that child is worthy of our protection and respect.”
Artemis T. Douglas of the pro-trans publication The Needle, called the slew of bills a “show of force for reactionary patriarchy’s anti-trans political movement.”
“Anti-trans politics protects social control,” Douglas added, “including men’s position in the gender hierarchy and the status of everyone else as either property or incubator.”
South Dakota has long been a hostile state for LGBTQ+ people. The Movement Advancement Project gave it an overall ranking of -9.5/49 on LGBTQ+ rights, with a -9/26 for trans rights, specifically.
The state bans trans students from playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity and also bans gender-affirming care for trans youth. It bans changing gender markers on birth certificates and also has no statewide nondiscrimination laws in place for gender identity or sexual orientation.
Senate Republicans have unveiled a comprehensive amendment package to the SAVE America Act that combines new federal voting restrictions with policies targeting transgender people. It comes after President Donald Trump has insisted that the provisions be added and the bill passed.
Offered as a substitute amendment, the proposal, obtained by Punchbowl News on Tuesday evening, reorganizes the legislation into three sections: elections, sports, and what it calls protections for children.
The election provisions would require Americans to present documentary proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote in federal elections, a change to current law. Voting by noncitizens is already illegal under federal law, and documented cases are rare. The proposal would also require photo identification to vote and limit mail voting, requiring most ballots to be cast in person and restricting absentee voting to specific circumstances such as illness, disability, or verified travel.
The amendment would also direct states to compare voter rolls with federal immigration databases and remove people identified as noncitizens, while requiring federal agencies to share data to support those checks.
Other sections of the package include unrelated culture war issues that focus on transgender people. One provision would bar transgender women and girls from participating in schoolsports aligned with their gender identity, stating that it would be a violation of federal law to allow “a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls,” and defining sex “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
Another section would create federal criminal penalties for gender-affirming care, or what the bill falsely describes as “genital and bodily mutilation of a minor” and “chemical castration of a minor.”
“It’s no surprise that Trump and his MAGA enablers in Congress are combining voting restrictions with attacks on the transgender community in this Frankenstein of a bill,” David Stacy, vice president of government affairs at the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement to The Advocate. “They are part of the same autocratic mission to suppress the vote, throw folks back in the closet, and undermine the will of the people.”
Stacy added that the amendment draws from earlier Republican legislation targeting gender-affirming care.
“If that wasn’t enough, the amendment copies and pastes language from a Marjorie Taylor Greene bill that would throw doctors in jail and even risk putting parents in handcuffs, simply for providing best practice care to their children,” he said. “This bill is a sad and dangerous attempt to cover up for the fact that Trump and Congressional Republicans have no plans to tackle rising costs or any of the priorities of the American people.”
Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt said he “worked closely” with the president “to introduce a substitute amendment that will save our elections, save women’s sports, and save our children from gender mutilation surgeries. It’s time to get this done.”
The amendment comes as Senate Republicans move forward with debate on the SAVE Act despite lacking the votes needed to pass it. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has acknowledged the bill is unlikely to reach the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster, but has continued with floor consideration.
Voting rights groups have warned that proof-of-citizenship requirements could make it harder for some eligible voters to register, particularly those whose documents do not match their current legal names, like married people, especially women, and transgender Americans. The amendment includes a process for name discrepancies but requires additional documentation or affidavits.
The legislation faces an uncertain path in the Senate. The House already passed a version of the bill that did not include the anti-trans provisions, and it would have to return to the House if the Senate passes it before Trump could sign the legislation into law. He has vowed not to sign any other bills into law until the measure receives a vote and passes.
The Idaho House passed legislation that could make it a felony for transgender people to step foot in a bathroom matching their gender identity.
The legislation takes aim directly at trans individuals using the restroom or locker rooms, threatening those who “knowingly” and “willfully” enter facilities designated for the “opposite biological sex” with prison time. A first offense would count as a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. Those caught using the bathroom in repeated offenses, however, could be convicted as felons and face up to five years in prison.
Idaho Rep. Cornel Rasor, the bill’s Republican sponsor, used transphobic rhetoric as he claimed the change in law was necessary to prevent individuals from criminal actions. “It prevents discomfort and voyeurism escalation and assaults, while preserving single-user options and narrow exceptions so no one is denied access for emergency aid,” Rasor said, according to theIdaho Capital Sun.
But Democratic Idaho Rep. Chris Mathias predicted the opposite would occur. “Forcing people who don’t look like the sex that they were born with, or transgender folks, forcing them to use other people’s bathrooms is going to put a lot of people in danger,” he said.
Ahead of the vote, a transgender Idaho resident, Nikson Matthews, urged lawmakers to consider the real-world consequences of the proposal, walking them through what enforcement could look like in practice. Matthews described a scenario in which someone sees him, a bearded man, enter a men’s restroom, recognizes or suspects he is transgender, and calls the police. Officers, he said, would arrive to find “a bearded man using the men’s bathroom,” yet investigate him solely because of his identity. Under the bill, Matthews warned, he could face up to a year in jail for “peeing, washing my hands, or even being in the bathroom to grab a tissue.”
He said the alternative, forcing him to use women’s facilities, could be even more dangerous, describing how his appearance could provoke confrontation or violence from others who perceive him as a man entering a women’s space. “Every single day when I’m out in public, I have to decide,” Matthews told lawmakers. “Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked?”
Ultimately, every Democrat in the Idaho House voted against the bill, but the party represents just nine of the chamber’s 70 members. Six Republicans joined with Democrats in voting no, but the bill passed by a 54-15 margin. It now heads to the Idaho Senate, where Republicans hold 29 of 35 seats.
Idaho lawmakers last year voted to restrict transgender people’s access to state-run facilities, including universities, prisons, and domestic violence shelters. The new bill criminalizes bathroom use in both publicly owned government buildings and private businesses that provide public accommodations.
Critics of the legislation cast it as a misguided attack on broader LGBTQ+ rights.
“Idaho politicians have positioned themselves as leaders in this calculated strategy to chip away at the rights of trans people. Each year, a more restrictive anti-trans bathroom law is passed that expands on the previous one,” the state’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said.
Trans Kansans are reportedly leaving the US state in droves after thousands had their driving licences forcibly revoked.
The midwestern state revoked more than 1,700 IDs this month after handing letters to thousands of citizens demanding they surrender their driving licences.
It comes after lawmakers passed SB244, a sweeping anti-trans bill banning Kansans from using public toilets and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. The bill also allows resident to submit bounty-style lawsuits against anyone they spot in facilities who they believe are transgender or non-binary.
Trans people in Kansas could face up to six months in jail if they don’t surrender their IDs. (Getty)
In response, the Kansas Division of Vehicles informed trans residents that their licences were now “invalid immediately” and must be exchanged for new licences documenting their birth sex.
Those who continue to drive without surrendering the licences could face “additional penalties”, including a $1,000 fine or even imprisonment.
Trans Kansan Jaelynn Abegg, who received a letter demanding her licence be revoked, said she plans to move to another state later this month and refuses to surrender her ID.
“I’m pretty heartbroken,” the 41-year-old told NBC News. “It is a continuation of the message that the Legislature has been sending out for years now, and that is that transgender people are not welcome in Kansas.”
Another woman, Andrea Ellis, said that, upon travelling to the DMV to have her licence changed, staff were confused over what to do, eventually giving her a temporary license with no changes.
Matthew Neumann, a Kansas-born trans man, said he refuses to leave the state over the legislation despite being threatened for using public toilets.
“I’m just disappointed and frustrated,” he said. “I’m just hoping that maybe this is the wake up call we need.”
Lawmakers passed the widely criticised bill despite governor Laura Kelly vetoing it in February, which was overturned by the Republican majority.
The Democratic governor said the law was “poorly drafted” and that its provisions were ripe for abuse that would have consequences “far beyond the intent to limit the right for trans people to use the appropriate bathroom”.
“[The law] will undoubtedly impact many others who are targeted with animus whether or not they are transgender. Meanwhile, leaders ignore real challenges facing families,” she continued. “This was sadly politics over people, but we will keep fighting for dignity and freedom for all LGBTQ+ people.”
Multiple cases have emerged across the UK and US over the past year, as anti-trans furore over toilet usage has grown louder, with many involving cisgender and transgender individuals.
In August last year, an 18-year-old cisgender lesbian said she was forced to expose her breasts to a staff member in a Buffalo Wild Wings who began banging on the toilet stall she was occupying and yelling that the “man needs to get out of here”.
Two anonymous trans Kansans sued the state over the bill’s passage last month, arguing that it violates human rights laws on autonomy and personal freedoms.
Douglas County District Judge James McCabria declined to grant a temporary restraining order against the law’s enforcement while the case proceeds earlier this week.
Harper Seldin, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) representing the plaintiffs said that Kansas was singling out trans residents “for unique social stigma”.
“They were suddenly required, with no notice or opportunity to be heard, to present themselves to the DMV to obtain driver’s licenses that announced to everyone – the teller at the bank, the clerk at the hotel, the poll worker on election day – that they are transgender,” Seldin said.
This week, England’s National Health Service (NHS) threw up yet another roadblock to gender-affirming care for transgender youth in the UK.
On Monday, the NHS announced it was pausing new referrals for feminizing and masculinizing hormones for 16- and 17-year-olds suffering from gender dysphoria, citing a collection of studies commissioned by the health service after publication of the controversial Cass Report in 2024, the Guardian reports.
That study recommended “extreme caution” initiating hormone treatments, including estrogen and testosterone, and a “clear clinical rationale for providing hormones at this stage rather than waiting until an individual reaches 18.”
The new NHS report comes to a similar conclusion.
“Following the Cass review, NHS England commissioned an in-depth review of all available clinical evidence for using estrogen or testosterone either alone or with other medications to treat gender incongruence and dysphoria,” the report states. “This review has established that the available evidence does not support the continued use of masculinizing or feminizing hormones to treat gender incongruence or dysphoria for young people under 18.”
The Cass Review, which contradicted long-established guidance around the efficacy of gender-affirming care for trans youth, has already prompted the health service to halt prescriptions of puberty-suppressing drugs for trans youth, with an indefinite ban for trans minors enacted by the UK government in December 2024.
The UK’s Health Secretary cited an “unacceptable safety risk” for halting new prescriptions of the drugs, though puberty blockers are still prescribed for early onset puberty and other conditions for children not suffering from gender dysphoria.
Puberty blockers, or GnRH analogues, slow down or halt the onset of puberty in young people taking them, and have preceded and been accompanied by the use of estrogen or testosterone for gender transition.
The positive effects of that combination therapy were all but ignored in the new NHS review, say critics of the decision to halt new prescriptions.
The Dutch Protocol, the “gold standard” for transition care, “involves prescribing GnRH analogues (puberty blockers) first to suppress puberty, then adding hormones later,” writes trans journalist Erin Reed in a story questioning the report’s findings.
“When hormones are introduced, the GnRH analogues are sometimes continued alongside them — the blocker keeps suppressing the body’s natural hormones while the prescribed estrogen or testosterone does its work. This overlap period means patients are on both GnRH analogues and hormones at the same time. That is the ‘combination therapy’ the reviews claim to examine.”
But the reviews “inexplicably excluded every study” where GnRH analogues and feminising and masculinising hormones were taken in succession or combination. The review tossed out hundreds of such studies in favour of a “salami slicing” approach that examined the hormones in isolation.
NHS was explicit in its methodology.
“Any reference to GnRH analogues in the context of puberty suppression or used as puberty-suppressing hormones must be excluded,” the report states.
“NHS England’s own data, cited in the reviews themselves, confirms that 98% of its patients followed the very pathway every review was designed to exclude,” Reed writes.
She called the NHS evidence reviews “an extreme example of politically-manufactured science.”
Gender Plus, a leading private trans healthcare and education service in the UK, accused NHS England of ignoring clinical expertise and evidence provided by leaders in the field, including the Endocrine Society, which recommends introducing the hormones for trans youth once “persistence of gender incongruence has been confirmed and the young person has sufficient capacity to consent.”
“NHS England’s interpretation of the evidence is in contrast to every reputable expert body in the field of transgender healthcare,” said a spokesperson for the health group.
NHS said patients currently receiving hormone treatments can continue the therapy, “but this will need to be reviewed individually with their clinical team.”
“Banning new prescriptions of gender-affirming hormones for 16- and 17-year-olds is a profound attack on young people’s bodily autonomy,” said Tammy Hymas, policy lead at British advocacy organization TransActual, “with trans people yet again cruelly singled out by this government.”
Iowa’s Republican Governor just signed a new law banning protections for trans people at the city and county level.
Gov. Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 579 earlier this week, the Des Moines Register reports. The bill, passed by Iowa’s House of Delegates on March 5 in a party-line vote, prevents local governments throughout the state from adding categories of civil rights violations that are not included in the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
“A city or local government shall not enact any ordinance or other law which is broader or has different categories of unfair or discriminatory practices than those provided,” in the state civil rights code, the bill states.
As the Register notes, the law also bans nearly 20 local governments with existing trans protections in their civil rights laws from enforcing them.
Reynolds told reporters Wednesday that signing the bill “was the right thing to do.”
“We just believe that the locals should follow the state laws, especially when it comes to civil rights, otherwise we have a mismatch of rights out there,” she said, according to the Register.
State Republican lawmakers made it clear that the point of the 2025 repeal was to ensure that Iowa’s anti-trans bathroom and sports bans and a law banning gender-affirming care for minors could survive potential court challenges, according to the Register.
“It does have an impact on protecting girls’ sports and making sure that we’re protecting girls in safe spaces, in restrooms and in lockers,” Reynolds said Wednesday of Senate File 579. “And so that was at jeopardy if we have a hodgepodge of mixed laws within our state.”
LGBTQ+ rights group One Iowa’s executive director, Max Mowitz, blasted Reynolds’ decision to ban trans protections at the local level, noting that the bill is one of only two pieces of legislation the governor has signed this year.
“Republicans acted as quickly as possible to remove any semblance of rights remaining for transgender Iowans, and took local civil rights commissions down with them,” Mowitz said in a statement, according to the Register.
“With all the issues facing Iowans at this moment, from cancer rates to water quality, Iowa Republicans can’t seem to agree on anything other than taking away civil rights,” he said. “Gov. Kim Reynolds’ legacy will be having removed more civil rights protections from her constituents than any other governor in history.”
The aggrieved mother of a Texas high school student has submitted what’s being described as the first formal complaint lodged over failure to comply with the state’s draconian “bathroom bill” enacted in December, and Senate candidate Ken Paxton is making the most of it.
In a letter to the Office of Texas Attorney General, the woman, whose name was redacted by Texas Values, the right-wing anti trans organization who coached her complaint and published the letter to Paxton, claims that her daughter, a student at Austin High School, informed her that a “biological male” student “has been using the female restrooms and private spaces at Austin High School.”
The woman notified the school on January 10 of the “violation of the recent law passed by the Texas legislature that requires students to use the private facilities based on their biological sex.”
After receiving no response from the school after a second complaint, the woman contacted Texas Values, which provided her with a form letter threatening the school. Administrators ignored that correspondence, as well, the woman claims.
Texas Values describes itself as “the largest statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to standing for faith, family, and freedom in Texas.”
A week later, at Texas Values’ urging, the woman wrote her rudimentary complaint with multiple misspellings and sent it to the AG’s office.
“I hope that the parent and her daughter can find some relief and put a stop to this or else the school must face consequences for not following the Texas Women’s Privacy Act,” said Mary Elizabeth Castle, Director of Government Relations for the organization, in a blog post advertising the letter they coached her to write, headlined, “Breaking! Parent Files Formal Complaint Against Austin ISD for Breaking Texas Women’s Privacy Law.”
On Friday, Paxton notified the Austin Independent School District of a citizen complaint via a state tip line alleging the violation of Senate Bill 8, also known as the Women’s Privacy Act. The snitch line was launched shortly after the bill took effect in December “to ensure that state entities are not allowing mentally ill men to invade women’s spaces,” according to the AG’s office.
Paxton’s office did not confirm whether the complaint urged on by Texas Values was the same as that referenced in the AG’s announcement; whether the complaint was verified; or if an official investigation is under way, the Texas Tribune reports.
Paxton’s notification is a statutory prerequisite for filing a lawsuit against Austin ISD. The school district was advised it’s subject to a $5,000 penalty for every day that the violation continues. They have two weeks days to cure the “bathroom bill” breach, the letter warned.
“The law is clear that political subdivisions in Texas must not allow biological men to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms,” Paxton said in the statement. He said his office would explore every legal avenue available.
Paxton, a culture-warring MAGA favorite now in his third term as Texas AG, has overcome multiple scandals and survived an impeachment effort in 2023. Now he’s facing a heated U.S. Senate primary runoff with incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, after Paxton’s admission of infidelity last year and an impending divorce.
While in any other scenario he’d already have President Trump’s endorsement, a Paxton win could give Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico an edge in November. So far, Trump has stayed on the sidelines.
Texas Values, despite endorsing the aggrieved high school mom’s bathroom complaint, has yet to endorse either Republican in the Senate race, as well.
“Candidates must be able to demonstrate a firm commitment to protecting religious liberty, marriage and family, and innocent human life,” the group says in their “Faith & Family Voter Guide.”
Recent guidance from the Trump administration requires federal prisons to begin reducing transgender inmates’ hormone therapy treatments.
Medical experts warn that the move will have dangerous medical and psychological consequences for incarcerated trans people, while legal experts say the guidance violates a federal judge’s preliminary injunction in a case challenging the administration’s anti-trans prison policies.
As Advocate reports, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) issued the new guidance in February. It not only bans prisons from providing hormone therapy to inmates who were not receiving it prior to incarceration, but also orders prisons to develop plans for tapering off treatment for those already receiving it.
Dr. Carl Streed, a Boston-based researcher specializing in transgender health, describes the guidance as “alarming.”
“It’s essentially saying that a form of evidence-based care will no longer be provided to people under the purview of the Bureau of Prisons,” Streed told Advocate. “That means the policy runs counter to best practices and arguably probably the law in terms of providing care to inmates because it’s setting up a different standard for them versus the standard out in the community.”
According to Streed, trans inmates receiving hormone therapy to treat gender dysphoria will experience a range of adverse health effects stemming from the drop in hormone levels if their treatment is decreased, including changes in cognition and mood, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and metabolic issues. For those who have already undergone surgeries as part of their gender-affirming care, the risks are even more serious.
“They no longer produce adequate endogenous hormones to a level that would be good for their health if we were to take away their exogenous hormones,” Streed said. “Now we’re going to take away hormone therapy for them — they are put at much greater risk than anybody else.”
As Just Detention International communications director Jesse Lerner-Kinglake said in a statement, the new policy will almost certainly exacerbate the already dangerous conditions for trans inmates. Data from the Department of Justice indicates transgender inmates are 10 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than straight prisoners, and multiple court cases have found that housing transgender women in men’s facilities and denying gender-related healthcare are violations of the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment.
But on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping anti-trans executive order, which, among other directives, instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to ensure that trans women are housed in men’s detention centers and that “no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”
Trans inmates, Lerner-Kinglake said, “already had a bullseye on their back — and the federal government knows it. The rates of sexual abuse facing the transgender community were astronomical before these new policies. It’s hard to imagine this already abysmal situation getting worse. And yet it will.”
It’s unclear whether the administration believes that merely weaning trans inmates off hormone therapy represents a legitimate workaround. But Shayna Medley, senior litigation staff attorney at Advocates for Trans Equality, told Advocate that the new BOP guidance violates that injunction.
“The February 19 guidance from the Bureau of Prisons directing tapering of hormone therapy for transgender people in custody is a direct violation of the injunction in Kingdom v. Trump, which requires the BOP to continue providing hormones to people in custody with a gender dysphoria diagnosis,” Medley said. Advocates for Trans Equality’s position, she said, is that the guidance “is currently enjoined by the existing injunction in the Kingdom v. Trump litigation.”
“Implementation would be in direct violation of the federal court’s order to continue providing hormone therapy to transgender people in BOP custody with a gender dysphoria diagnosis.”
In most of New England, the question of whether transgender people may use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity has largely been settled. In New Hampshire, lawmakers are reopening it.
The Republican-controlled New Hampshire House voted 181–164 on Wednesday evening to pass House Bill 1442, legislation that would allow schools, government buildings, and some businesses to restrict bathrooms and locker rooms based on sex assigned at birth rather than gender identity. The bill now heads to the state Senate.
If enacted, the measure would place New Hampshire further out of step with the rest of the Northeast, where protections for trans residents in public accommodations remain broadly intact.
House Bill 1442 would require bathrooms and locker rooms in public schools and municipally owned buildings to be designated for male or female use based on sex. The bill also allows businesses and other places of public accommodation to require that multi-user restrooms be used according to what the legislation defines as a person’s “biological sex.”
The proposal goes further than many similar measures elsewhere by creating a new legal mechanism tied to restroom use. Under the bill, entering an area designated for females while classified as male under the statute could be considered “willful trespass.”
The legislation also establishes a statutory definition of sex that centers on biological characteristics such as chromosomes and reproductive anatomy, stating that a person’s gender identity does not determine access to spaces designated for males or females.
Supporters argue the legislation protects privacy in intimate spaces. Opponents say it singles out transgender people for exclusion and undermines civil rights protections that the state adopted less than a decade ago.
The vote follows several years of legislative attempts to pass similar restrictions, which repeatedly ran into gubernatorial vetoes.
Weeks ago, Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, vetoed a comparable proposal that would have allowed transgender people to be excluded from bathrooms, locker rooms, jails, and other gender-segregated spaces. It was the third time in as many years that a New Hampshire governor rejected similar legislation.
Ayotte said the earlier proposal was overly broad and risked creating an exclusionary environment.
Her predecessor, Chris Sununu, who is also a Republican, vetoed a similar measure in 2024, writing that lawmakers were attempting to address problems “that have not presented themselves.”
Yet the issue has returned to the legislature year after year.
Advocates say the persistence reflects a broader campaign targeting transgender rights in the state. According to the advocacy group 603 Equality, several bills introduced during the current legislative session attempt to regulate public facilities based on what lawmakers describe as “biological sex,” part of a wider slate of proposals affecting bathrooms, sports participation, and identification documents.
The group says House Bill 1442 is among the most “sweeping and cruel” of those proposals.
In 2018, New Hampshire added gender identity to its nondiscrimination law, becoming the final state in New England to extend those protections. At the time, the move appeared to complete a regional consensus on LGBTQ+ equality.
In recent years, however, that consensus has begun to fracture.
In 2025, Ayotte signed legislation banning gender-affirming medical care such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors, making New Hampshire the first state in New England to enact such a restriction.
Neighboring states, including Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, maintain broad protections for transgender residents across public accommodations and health care.
Even Maine, which, like New Hampshire, has long been politically competitive and regularly elects Republicans to statewide office, has not enacted comparable restrictions on transgender rights. Instead, Maine has become the focus of a separate political fight: a proposed ballot measure backed by national conservative donors that would bar transgender girls from school sports and require schools to separate bathrooms and locker rooms based on sex assigned at birth.
Advocates say such policies place transgender people in untenable situations, forcing them to choose between using facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or risking confrontation.
The Florida Senate on March 4 voted 25-11 to approve an “Anti-Diversity in Local Government” bill that critics have called a sweeping and extreme measure that, among other things, could repeal local LGBTQ rights protections.
According to Equality Florida, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization, if approved by the Florida House of Representatives and signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the bill “would ban, repeal, and defund any local government programming, policy, or activity that provides ‘preferential treatment or special benefits’ or is designed or implemented’ with respect to race, color, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”
In a March 4 statement, Equality Florda added that the bill would also threaten city and county officials with removal from office “for activities vaguely labeled as DEI,” with only limited exceptions.
The Florida House was scheduled to vote on the bill on Monday, March 9, with opponents hopeful that a broad coalition of both Democratic and Republican lawmakers would secure enough votes to defeat the bill.
“Once again, Gov. DeSantis and Florida lawmakers are advancing one of the most sweeping and extreme bills in the country — this time threatening decades of local progress supporting diverse communities, including the LGBTQ community,” said Equality Florida Senior Political Director Joe Saunders. “This legislation is a sledgehammer aimed at cities and counties that recognize and address the diversity of the people they serve,” he said.
Among the LGBTQ organizations that could be adversely impacted by the bill is the highly acclaimed Stonewall National Museum, Archives and Library located in Fort Lauderdale.
Robert Kesten, the Stonewall organization’s president and CEO, told the Washington Blade the organization receives some funding from Broward County, in which Fort Lauderdale is located, and the city of Fort Lauderdale has provided support by purchasing tables at some of the museum’s fundraising events.
“Based on this legislation, hose things would be gone,” he said. “We also are based in a government building. So, we don’t know what potential side effects that could have.” He noted that the building in question is owned by Broward County and leased by Fort Lauderdale, with the bill’s vaguely worded provision making it unclear whether Stonewall would be forced to leave its building.
“It’s unknown, and we’re really in unchartered waters,” he said.
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