Scotland’s sole clinic for treating transgender youths announced Thursday that it is pausing new prescriptions of puberty blockers for minors.
Sandyford, a health clinic in Glasgow operated by Scotland’s National Health Service, said in a statement that it is indefinitely pausing new prescriptions of the medication for people under 18 who are experiencing “gender incongruence.” Patients who are already undergoing treatment will not be affected.
“We are committed to providing the best possible clinical care for young people accessing and understand the distress that gender incongruence can cause,” the clinic said. “While this pause is in place, we will continue to give anyone who is referred into the Young People Gender Service the psychological support that they require while we review the pathways in line with the findings.”
The announcement comes less than two weeks after a report commissioned by England’s National Health Service concluded that the medical evidence around transition-related care for minors is “remarkably weak” and that more research is needed. The report, known as the Cass Review, was funded by the NHS and independently led by prominent British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass.
In March, prior to the release of the full report, England’s NHS said it would stop new prescriptions of puberty blockers.
Public health officials in Scotland cited the Cass Review for their reasoning, saying it would be working with England’s NHS to “generate evidence of safety and long-term impact for therapies.”
“The Cass Review is a significant piece of work into how the NHS can better support children and young people who present with gender dysphoria,” Tracey Gillies, executive medical director at NHS Lothian, one of the 14 regional divisions of NHS Scotland, said in a statement. “Patient safety must always be our priority and it is right that we pause this treatment to allow more research to be carried out.”
Scottish Trans, a division of Scotland’s Equality Network that focuses on trans rights, said that Scottish health officials were making the “wrong decision, and that it will harm trans children and young people.”
“This decision has been taken within the context where the reality of trans people’s experiences and lives is questioned almost daily in some of the media and some political circles,” the group said in a statement. “This makes us worry that the decision has been influenced by that context rather than solely through consideration of the best interests of trans children and young people.”
Puberty blockers — which have been used for decades to delay puberty in children who were developing too quickly — are now typically prescribed to prevent the onset of puberty for youths questioning their gender identities. The drugs also give youths greater time to decide whether to pursue more permanent treatments like hormone replacement therapy and transition-related surgeries.
Nearly all of the major medical associations in the United States have come out in favor of transition-related care, including puberty blockers, for the physical and mental well-being of transgender minors.
Twenty-three U.S. states have enacted bans on gender-affirming care, including the prescription of puberty blockers, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank that tracks policies affecting LGBTQ Americans. Health care providers in five states — Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Idaho — could be charged with a felony for providing gender-affirming care to trans minors, according to MAP.
Best Buy offered to screen donations from its employee resource groups going to LGBTQ causes following pressure from a conservative think tank that holds shares in the company, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing made public this week.
The SEC filing contains a monthslong email exchange between the National Center for Public Policy Research, which describes itself as a “nonpartisan, free-market conservative think tank,” and Best Buy. The dialogue, which hasn’t been previously reported, shows how the center said it would make “a splash” unless the consumer electronics giant moved in favor of its demands.
In some of the last correspondence in the filing, Best Buy noted that it allows its employee resource groups “some discretion to directly support organizations of their choosing” but added that “any such contributions would be screened to ensure they do not advocate or support the causes or agendas you have identified as concerning.” One of the causes the NCPPR cited was transgender care for minors, which the group falsely described as an attempt to “mutilate the reproductive organs of children.”
When asked for a request for comment regarding the filing, Carly Charlson, a spokesperson for Best Buy, stated in an email: “At Best Buy, we strongly believe in an inclusive work environment with a culture of belonging where everyone feels valued and has the opportunity to thrive. This commitment is evident through our longstanding and continuing support of organizations like HRC, which has recognized us as one of the best places to work for the LGBTQIA+ community for the past 18 years.”
She then sent a followup email adding, “Nothing has changed in the ways we give to LGBTQIA+ organizations.”
In HRC, Charlson was referring to the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ-rights group.
“The news of this SEC filing is very concerning, and we are working in partnership with Best Buy to understand more,” Eric Bloem, HRC’s vice president of programs and corporate advocacy, said in a statement Friday afternoon. “Any company that uses their Corporate Equality Index distinction as cover while working with fringe groups and bad actors does not reflect true LGBTQ+ allyship in the corporate space.”
The communication in the SEC filing began on Dec. 11, when the NCPPR sent Best Buy a shareholder proposal asking the retailer to produce by June — and distribute at Best Buy’s annual shareholder meeting that month — a report for investors analyzing how its partnerships with LGBTQ nonprofits are benefitting the company’s business.
“Best Buy has partnerships with and contributes to organizations and activists that promote the practice of gender transition surgeries on minors and evangelize gender theory to minors. Why are Best Buy shareholders funding the proliferation of an ideology seeking to mutilate the reproductive organs of children before they finish puberty?” the proposal, signed by Ethan Peck, an associate at the NCPPR’s Free Enterprise Institute, states. “This contentious and vast disagreement between radical gender theory activists and the general public has nothing to do with Best Buy selling electronics.”
In an email dated Jan. 17, Peck told Best Buy’s attorneys that his organization “will withdraw its proposal if Best Buy were to end its partnerships with and contributions to” eight different LGBTQ nonprofits and initiatives, which he refers to as “predatory butchers” in his email. These groups include The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization; SAGE, which advocates on behalf of LGBTQ elders; and GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy group.
Peck did, however, leave the Human Rights Campaign off this list, stating in his email that “we understand that it’s unrealistic for Best Buy to leave HRC in the near future because of their political clout.”
“We hope you take this off-ramp for the sake of shareholders,” Peck wrote in the Jan. 17 email. “Were Best Buy to agree to such a compromise with us, we will not make a splash about it.”
In a Feb. 5 email, Marina Rizzo, a Best Buy attorney, told Peck that the company had reviewed his organization’s concerns and informed him that the company hadn’t donated in several years to two of the LGBTQ causes mentioned in the Jan. 17 email — the Trevor Project and Our Gay History in 50 States — and has never donated to the other six. She then says the company would screen certain donations the NCPPR may find concerning.
“As discussed during our call, we do allow our individual employee organizations, including our Military ERG, Conservative employee interest group, and our PRIDE group, among many other groups, some discretion to directly support organizations of their choosing,” Rizzo wrote. “That said, any such contributions would be screened to ensure they do not advocate or support the causes or agendas you have identified as concerning. We hope this addresses the concerns.”(In a letter included in the SEC filing, Best Buy notes that its employee resource groups “are provided with their own funding and have the capability to identify sponsorships to receive that funding, subject to internal guidelines and Company oversight.”)
Later that day, Peck thanked Rizzo in an email “for looking into this” and added, “we’re definitely delighted to hear all that.” He then raised several follow-up questions, including why a page on the Best Buy website still indicates the company supports the Trevor Project and a book titled “Our Gay History in 50 States.”
“We’re going to need some kind of proof that that funding has ended,” Peck wrote.
In an email on Feb. 9, Rizzo informed Peck that Best Buy would submit a letter to the SEC that afternoon asking that the regulator not take any action against the company for omitting NCPPR’s proposal from shareholder materials. She also told him that the letter is a “standard part of the proposal process, and we intend to continue our dialogue.” She ended the email by writing, “We remain ready to reach an understanding in conjunction with the withdrawal agreement you initially outlined.”
No additional email correspondence is included in the SEC filing after Feb. 9, and it’s unclear whether an agreement between Best Buy and NCPPR was ever reached. On March 22, NCPPR withdrew its Dec. 11 shareholder proposal. Then, on Tuesday of this week, Best Buy pulled its Feb. 9 “no action” requestfrom the SEC, and the agency sent a letter on Wednesday confirming the matter was moot. This, in turn, ensures NCPPR’s shareholder proposal regarding LGBTQ donations will not be presented at Best Buy’s annual shareholder meeting in June.
In response to NBC News’ request for comment, Peck declined to share any specifics regarding his communication with Best Buy, stating, “We don’t discuss confidential discussions.” He did, however, confirm that his organization has sent similar proposals to other public companies, though he did not name them.
When asked why he chose the eight LGBTQ causes mentioned in the Best Buy SEC filing, he wrote, “We used those groups as examples of groups that have adopted radical and divisive positions on LGBTQ issues, but we recognize that many more such groups exist.”
The exchange between Best Buy and the NCPPR comes as many large companies face renewed pressure from conservatives to curb their public support for the LGBTQ community.
Major consumer brands, includingBud Light and Target, have faced heated criticism from conservative activists, prompting a rollback of LGBTQ-focused marketing campaigns and products as well as calls for boycotts. In Bud Light’s case, sales declined and shares of its parent company, Anheuser-Busch Inbev, tumbled in the months following the beer brand’s partnership with transgender influencerDylan Mulvaney on April 1 of last year, though the stock has since rebounded.
In an email on Friday, GLAAD, one of the LGBTQ nonprofits mentioned in the SEC filing, expressed its displeasure with Best Buy.
“Executives at Best Buy ought to be ashamed of how they turned their backs on their LGBTQ and ally employees and consumers,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said. “They know what they did was wrong, or they would not have tried to hide this cowardly, toxic corporate takeover inside an ordinary SEC filing.”
The Sacramento City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to declare the California capital a “sanctuary city for transgender people.”
The resolution, which takes effect immediately, ensures that no city resources will be used to criminalize trans people seeking transition-related care or to cooperate with jurisdictions seeking to enforce laws that criminalize the care elsewhere.
It comes as conservative lawmakers across the country have enacted laws to limit both surgical and nonsurgical forms of gender-affirming care for minors — including puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy — within the last handful of years. Twenty-four states limit gender-affirming care for trans youths, according to LGBTQ think tank Movement Advancement Project.
“California has been a leader in protecting the rights of transgender individuals to access care, but many states across the nation are moving in the opposite direction,” the resolution reads. “In preparation of future legislation that may criminalize those providing or seeking gender-affirming care and given the Council’s stated values of equity and inclusion, it is important for the City of Sacramento to be proactive in reiterating our commitment to transgender rights and equal protections for transgender people by declaring ourselves a sanctuary city and a place of safety for transgender people.”
Proponents of the measure applauded the council’s unanimous vote.
“By affirming our commitment to supporting our LGBTQ+ community and ensuring that no city resources or staff time will be used to help enforce these harmful laws in other jurisdictions, the City has taken a step beyond state law and sent a powerful signal to everyone in our community that we are a safe place for everyone,” Sacramento Councilmember Katie Valenzuela, who introduced the resolution, wrote on X. “Tonight’s testimony in support of this resolution was a powerful reminder of the resiliency and passion in our community to protect our transgender neighbors. I have never been prouder to represent this incredible city I call home.”
Opponents slammed the vote, arguing that gender-affirming care can be harmful to children.
“We cannot be giving children cross-sex hormones. We can’t give them surgeries to change their sex,” Beth Bourne, a member of a Sacramento chapter of Moms for Liberty, conservative group focused on school curricula, told NBC affiliate KCRA of Sacramento. “This sanctuary city is saying that we will promote the idea that people can be born in the wrong body.”
As debates over whether such care should be prohibited continue in state legislatures, major U.S. medical associations — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association — have repeatedly come out in support of transition-related care, including for some minors. The AMA and APA have both deemed it medically necessary.
The Sacramento City Council is not the first governmental body to pass such a measure aimed at safeguarding trans rights and gender-affirming care in particular. In recent years, 14 states and Washington, D.C., have passed legislation to protect access to gender-affirming care, commonly referred to as “shield laws,” according to MAP.
The bipartisan measure to avert a government shutdown includes a provision that would effectively ban LGBTQ Pride flags from flying over U.S. embassies.
Although the $1.2 trillion, 1,012-page-package does not explicitly mention barring Pride flags from flying at U.S. embassies, its text embraces a Republican-led effort to prohibit the display of the LGBTQ Pride flag at government buildings.
“None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be obligated or expended to fly or display a flag over a facility of the United States Department of State” other than the U.S. flag, the POW/MIA flag, the Hostage and Wrongful Detainee flag, flag of a state, flag of an Indian Tribal government, official branded flag of a U.S. agency or the sovereign flag of other countries, the text reads.
The provision does not address the display of these flags in other locations, such as on embassy grounds or in offices, a source familiar told NBC News.
The Biden administration urged Congress to pass the spending bill, describing it as a “compromise between Republicans and Democrats” in a statement the White House released Thursday. The measure would keep the government funded through Sept. 30 ahead of a midnight deadline.
A White House spokesperson told NBC News on Saturday that Biden “believes it was inappropriate to abuse the process that was essential to keep the government open by including this policy targeting LGBTQI+ Americans.”
“The Administration fought against the inclusion of this policy and we will continue to work with members of Congress to find an opportunity to repeal it. We were successful in defeating 50+ other policy riders attacking the LGBTQI+ community that Congressional Republicans attempted to insert into the legislation,” the White House spokesperson added.
At least one Democrat slammed the provision. Speaking with reporters on Thursday, Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, the progressive caucus whip, chalked it up as “laughable.”
“It shows just how low the Republican Party has gotten that they’ve threatened to shut down government services over trying to figure out which flags can be flown in front of which buildings,” Casar told reporters. “I think it’s laughable, not just to Democratic voters but to Republican voters.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly touted the provision as a victory in a closed-door meeting with other Republican lawmakers on Wednesday morning, according to Bloomberg.
Some LGBTQ advocates downplayed the provision’s impact and pointed to successful efforts from the White House and Democratic congressional leaders to remove several anti-LGBTQ provisionsRepublicans had originally added to the funding measure, including a limit on gender-affirming care for transgender Americans.
“It poses absolutely no limits to other displays of a pride flag, hosting LGBTQ+ events or embassy employees’ ability to display Pride flags in their workplaces,” Brandon Wolf, a spokesperson for the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement Friday. “This is desperate spin from a Speaker whose MAGA members just saw their effort to hijack the appropriations process roundly rejected.”
In 2019, the Trump administration began rejecting requests from U.S. embassies to display Pride flags on flagpoles during LGBTQ Pride Month.
Pride flags were again allowed to fly at U.S. embassies during Pride Month after Biden was sworn into office in 2021. However, that same year, House Republicans introduced legislation, known as the “Old Glory Only Act,” which would have required the secretary of state to ensure “that no United States diplomatic or consular post flies any flag other than the United States flag over such post.” The measure was unsuccessful.
On a local scale, there has also been a push to enact effective Pride flag bans.
In January, Florida state lawmakers advanced a measure that would ban teachers and government employees from displaying flags that depict a “racial, sexual orientation and gender, or political ideology viewpoint.” And this month, more than 58% of voters in Hunting Beach, California, cast ballots in favor of a measure to prohibit the Pride flag and other nongovernmental banners to fly on city property.
The efforts to prohibit the flag — a decades-old symbol of unity and LGBTQ equality — come as far-right ideologues are attempting to link the flag to a trope that links gay and transgender people to child abusers who want to “groom” or sexualize children.
A transgender “bathroom ban” in North Carolina caused a national uproar in 2016. Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Nick Jonas and a long list of other A-list performers canceled shows in the state. Global corporations Deutsche Bank and PayPal torpedoed plans to expand in Cary and Charlotte. The NCAA moved its scheduled championship games elsewhere.
Now, eight years later, after Utah passed a similar bill on Monday, the reaction beyond the state’s borders appears to be more of a shrug.
Neither of Utah’s largest businesses released statements in response to the legislation. Tens of thousands of out-of-towners, and an ensuing economic boost, were just heading home from the Sundance Film Festival, held annually in Park City. Global sensation — and queer icon — Bad Bunny is slated to headline a concert in Salt Lake City in upcoming weeks. Next month, Salt Lake City will be hosting first- and second-round games in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
Representatives for the NCAA, Bad Bunny and Sundance did not immediately return requests for comment.
In fact, nine other states passed so-called transgender bathroom bills in the years between those passed by North Carolina and Utah, with little fanfare as well.
Moral Monday demonstrators head toward the General Assembly from the Bicentennial Mall after gathering and calling for the repeal of HB2 in Raleigh, N.C., in 2016.Jill Knight / Raleigh News & Observer via Getty Images file
Allison Scott, who volunteered as an on-the-ground activist in North Carolina to fight HB 2, described this week’s lackluster reaction to Utah’s “bathroom bill” and the several others that have been passed in recent years as “very telling.”
“We were all saying that with HB 2: ‘It’s not over,’” said Scott, who is also the director of impact and innovation for the Campaign for Southern Equality, an LGBTQ advocacy group. “Now, here we are several years later and we’ve seen these bills grow and increase and grow and increase year over year over year, and we’re right back not only where we started but worse.”
While the enactment of the Utah law has immediate implications for the state’s trans community, the tepid response to its passage also reflects a broader retreat on transgender rights that less than a decade ago galvanized corporate America, elite sports and Hollywood.
Utah House Bill 257, which is titled “Sex-based Designations for Privacy, Anti-bullying and Women’s Opportunities,” limits transgender people’s access to bathrooms in public schools and government-operated buildings. These include restrooms at Salt Lake City International Airport, which is managed by local government, and in Utah’s public hospitals and universities. It also specifies the state’s legal definition of “male” and “female” is based on a person’s genitalia at birth rather than their gender identity.
The bill makes exceptions for trans people who have received genital surgery and changed their gender marker to match their gender identity on their birth certificates.
Critics of the legislation have said the law will create a “dangerous situation for trans youth.”
Supporters of the legislation have argued that without a measure in place, men posing as trans women will go into women’s public restrooms and commit sexual misconduct.
Rep. Kera Birkeland, who sponsored the Utah law, said that the bill was necessary to close a “giant loophole for predators” and will only criminally charge offenders who commit “an offense of lewdness,” as the bill states.
“If the people just go in and use the bathroom the way they’re supposed to be used, they will be fine. That has remained consistent throughout the bill, throughout any change,” Birkeland said in a phone call. “We’re not targeting just people who are transgender or people who are like, ‘I’m going to miss my flight, I’m going to duck into the men’s bathroom because the line is shorter.’”
She also pushed back on criticism that the bill would create an environment where Utahns are policing trans people in public restrooms, pointing to a provision in the bill that would criminally charge people for falsely reporting trans people in public restrooms.
“We do not want to incentivize any vigilante people out there trying to be jerks,” she said. “The whole goal is just to ensure that everyone feels like they have a safe place to do private things.”
Erin Reed, a transgender journalist and advocate, pushed back on this, arguing that the legislation will create disruption for trans people regardless of the bill’s specifics.
“People are not going to go through the fine points of a 12-page law,” Reed said. “More likely than not, you’re just going to see trans people and cis people challenged in bathrooms.”
Aside from Utah and North Carolina, lawmakers in nine other states have enacted similar legislation in recent years, including in Florida, Tennessee and Kentucky, according to a tally by The Associated Press. The measures largely restrict trans people’s access to restrooms solely in schools or in schools and government-operated buildings.
But North Carolina’s law, HB 2, went further, barring trans people from using restrooms and changing facilities that matched their gender identities in most public spaces.
A sign protesting a North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access in the bathroom stalls at the 21C Museum Hotel in Durham, N.C., in 2016. Jonathan Drake / Reuters file
HB 2 — which was later partially repealed in 2017 — also prevented local governments from passing LGBTQ nondiscrimination measures and rendered then-existing protections, including one in Charlotte, moot. For this reason, the law affected a much broader segment of the population compared to today’s bills and therefore drew national ire, said Shannon Gilreath, a professor at Wake Forest University’s School of Law and a faculty member of the university’s gender and sexuality program.
“When one’s own interests are not directly compromised by some form of discrimination, one is less likely to respond or to care,” Gilreath said. “I might not believe that’s necessarily the right attitude to have — to do what’s expedient versus to do what’s right in a situation — but that’s human nature.”
Some studies back Gilreath’s line of reasoning.
A survey from the nonpartisan research group Public Religion Research Institute conducted last year found an estimated 79% of Americans support anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people. Policies that largely favor trans Americans solely received significantly less support, the poll found. However, Americans who say they know at least one trans person are much more likely to support pro-trans policies, a 2022 survey from the Pew Research Center found.
Reed said that what’s changed from 2016 to now is that people — and even billion-dollar corporations — have become afraid of provoking the far-right.
She pointed to a group of conservative provocateurs who collectively have amassed tens of millions of social media followers in part by stoking outrage over LGBTQ issues. In several instances, threats of violence have followed the subjects of posts made or amplified by the group of right-wing influencers.
“These people are scary,” Reed said. “If the NBA All-Star Game threatened to pull a game right now? In this atmosphere? Today? They’d get bomb threats from conservatives.”
Last year, bomb threats were made to Budweiser factories across the country after trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s brand partnership with Bud Light created an online firestorm in pockets of right-wing social media. Target also pulled some of its LGBTQ-themed merchandise for Pride Month from its shelves last year after it said it received “threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work.”
Pride month merchandise at the front of a Target store in Hackensack, N.J., last year.Seth Wenig / AP file
Reed also suggested that it might not be politically advantageous for Republicans to go against the grain when it comes to issues that affect trans people.
Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine faced political blowback after vetoing a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors in the state in December. Former President Donald Trump urged Ohio state lawmakers to override the veto, writing on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he was “finished” with the Republican governor. Ohio senators overrode the governor’s veto last week.
In recent weeks, local activists had been unsure whether Utah Gov. Spencer Cox would sign HB 257. Cox in 2022 vetoed legislation that aimed to limit transgender students’ ability to compete on girls sports teams in school, citing the disproportionate rate of suicidal ideation among trans kids.
Conservative lawmakers introduced more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures across the country, according to a tally by the ACLU, with the majority of them targeting trans people. Seventy-five of those bills became law, including a ban on gender-affirming care for minors in Utah, which Cox signedinto law.
Cox signed Utah’s “bathroom bill” on Monday evening with little fanfare and issued a short statement after weeks of speculation on his position.
“We want public facilities that are safe and accommodating for everyone and this bill increases privacy protections for all,” the statement read.
The law is effective immediately.
In addition to Utah, legislators in five states — South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas and Iowa — have introduced their own “bathroom bills” or legislation that further expands “bathroom bills” already on the books, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Utah lawmakers passed a bill on Friday that would bar transgender people from using bathrooms in schools and government buildings that correspond with their gender identities.
House Bill 257, which is titled “Sex-based Designations for Privacy, Anti-bullying and Women’s Opportunities,” also specifies the state’s legal definition of “male” and “female” is based on a person’s genitalia rather than their gender identity. The bill now heads to the governor’s desk for enactment.
This is the third year in a row that lawmakers in Utah have passed legislation that limits the rights of the state’s trans community.
The bill’s passage also comes less than seven years after the enactment of a similar piece of legislation in North Carolina, HB 2, caused national outrage. While HB 2 triggered a boycott of the state by global corporations, big-name performers and college sports leagues, there has been little fanfare over the Utah bill other than from advocates and LGBTQ people living in the state.
If the bill is enacted, it will be the 13th law in the country to limit trans people’s ability to use public facilities in some capacity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ research group that has been tracking the bills.
Supporters of the measure argued that the bill is necessary to prevent “predators seeking to harm women” from entering bathrooms and changing facilities under the guise that they are trans women.
“Let’s be clear, sexual assault knows no boundaries. Keeping men from women’s spaces is an appropriate and much needed boundary in Utah and across America,” Utah state Rep. Kera Birkeland, the bill’s lead sponsor, said on X on Thursday. “Nobody is calling out the transgender community for crimes against women.”
Conversely, critics have condemned the bill for singling out the state’s trans community.
Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, called the legislation an “invasion into our basic freedoms.”
“No student should be denied access to the bathroom that aligns with who they are,” she said in a statement on Friday. “No one should fear harassment in the most private of settings. Period.”
It is unclear if Republican Gov. Spencer Cox will sign the bill into law. Cox’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment and the governor has not commented publicly regarding the bill.
In 2022, Cox vetoed legislation that aimed to limit transgender students’ ability to compete on girls sports teams in school. (Subsequently, Utah lawmakers overrode their Republican governor’s veto and the bill became law.) But last year, Cox signed a ban on gender affirming care for minors into law within the first few weeks of the legislative session.
Equality Utah, an LGBTQ advocacy group, said in a statement on X Friday that it successfully fought to include language in the text of HB 257 that would prevent criminal action against minors who go against the law and that it would continue to advocate on behalf of trans youth.
The original bill’s text would have effectively banned transgender people from using public restrooms that match their gender identity at any facility in the state that receives public funding, including hospitals and airports. But the state’s Senate amended the language to limit the scope of the prohibitions to public schools and government-owned facilities, which state House lawmakers overwhelmingly agreed to.
“It’s very clear that right now there are going to be continued and constant political attacks on transgender and nonbinary Utahns,” Aaron Welcher, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, said. “And it’s really unfortunate for all the reasons that we fight for people’s rights and civil liberties, but it is also really unfortunate because many of these people who have been affected over the last three years are youth.”
Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has been quietly mounting a legal battle against World Aquatics to overturn the swimming governing body’s effective ban on most trans women competing in the highest levels of the sport, a lawyer representing Thomas confirmed to NBC News on Friday.
Carlos Sayao, a partner at top Canadian law firm Tyr, said Thomas is asking the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland to overturn the new World Aquatics rules, issued in June 2022, that prohibit trans women from competing in women’s swimming events unless they transitioned before age 12.
The U.K.’s Telegraph was the first to report on Thomas’ behind-closed-doors legal challenge in an article published Thursday evening. Details of Thomas’ challenge, which The Telegraph reported began in September, were not made public previously because cases brought before the Court of Arbitration for Sport are meant to be kept confidential by all parties involved.
The new rules, which would effectively bar trans women from competing in women’s swimming events at the Olympics, came several months after Thomas, then a student at the University of Pennsylvania, made history by becoming the first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship. And in May 2022, Thomas told ABC News’ “Good Morning America” that it’s been a lifelong goal of hers to compete in the Olympics.
Thomas made global headlines for her NCAA win and became the face — and often conservative media’s punching bag — of the worldwide debate over whether trans women should compete in women’s sports.
Lia Thomas competes on March 17, 2022, at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta. Rich von Biberstein / Icon Sportswire via AP
Sayao confirmed his comments to The Telegraph regarding the rules imposed by World Aquatics, which he called “discriminatory” and said caused “profound harm to trans women.”
“Trans women are particularly vulnerable in society and they suffer from higher rates of violence, abuse and harassment than cis women,” he told the British newspaper.
Sayao declined to comment further.
World Aquatics and the Court of Arbitration for Sport did not immediately return requests for comment.
Jorge Giovani Estevez, 33, was arrested Wednesday and charged with one count of battery with prejudice, according to arrest records shared by the Miami Police Department. Daiken Fernandez, 25, was arrested the same day and charged with two counts of felony battery with prejudice, the records show.
Efforts to reach Estevez and Fernandez on Tuesday were unsuccessful, and their defense attorneys have not yet been announced.
The incident took place Nov. 26 in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, which is known worldwide for its art galleries and colorful street murals. In video footage obtained last month by NBC South Florida, two men can be seen attacking the two women and their male friend, who reportedly tried to intervene.
“This group of guys, basically, they just started screaming stuff at us, anti-lesbian comments … and he used a profanity word,” one of the victims, who asked that her name not be published because of fears of retaliation from her attackers, told NBC South Florida in a video interview last month.
She added that she was punched in the face three times and that her injuries may require surgery.
The beatings caused the other woman — who also asked that her name not be published for the same reason as her friend — to fall, strike her head and lose consciousness, she said.
“I definitely felt targeted for sure; I mean they were definitely trying to hate on the fact that we were gay,” she told NBC South Florida. “I don’t understand to this day why.”
Miami Police Chief Manuel A. Morales told NBC South Florida that such encounters are rare in the city and will not be tolerated.
“We need to respect one another and respect the rights of our fellow citizens to actually live life in a safe and happy way,” he said.
Estevez was released on a $5,000 bond and Fernandez was released on a $7,500 bond, according to a spokesperson for Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez. The men are set to be arraigned Jan. 26, the spokesperson added.
If convicted, the pair could face up to 15 year prison sentences for each of the felony counts against them, according to NBC South Florida.
The New Hampshire attorney general’s office filed a civil rights lawsuit against a neo-Nazi group on Wednesday alleging it disrupted a drag story hour at a café in June.
Attorney General John Formella filed the complaint against 19 unnamed members of the New England neo-Nazi group NSC-131, which stands for Nationalist Social Club, and their leader, Christopher Hood, 25, accusing them of violating the state’s anti-discrimination laws for trying to stop the café’s drag story hour through acts of intimidation.
The event, where drag queens read children’s books to kids, took place during Pride Month at Teatotaller, an LGBTQ-owned coffee shop in Concord, the state’s capital. A viral video posted by Juicy Garland, the drag queen hosting the event, shows the group of neo-Nazis wearing masks, sunglasses, baseball caps and matching shirts and pants, shouting, raising their right arms in unison and banging on the coffee shop’s windows.
“Acts of hate designed to terrorize an individual or business into violating our State’s antidiscrimination laws are simply wrong and will not be tolerated,” Formella said in a statement. “The Department of Justice will continue to enforce the State’s antidiscrimination laws to the greatest extent possible to ensure that people of all backgrounds can live free from discrimination, fear, and intimidation because of who they are.”
William E. Gens, an attorney for Hood, said he has not yet read the complaint but summed it up to “virtue signaling” by Formella.
“This attorney general has a rather narrow view of free speech and he’s lost and he’s going to try it again,” Gens said, referring to a similar complaint the attorney general filed against Hood in January that was later dismissed. “Maybe he thinks he’ll find a judge that thinks like he does. I hope not, not just for Chris Hood’s sake but for all our sakes.”
If Hood and the 19 unnamed men are found to have violated the state’s anti-discrimination law, they can face a $10,000 penalty, according to a news releaseissued by the attorney general’s office on Wednesday.
Emmett Soldati, the coffee shop’s owner, applauded the attorney general’s complaint, saying that it “sends a very strong message” of support to the state’s LGBTQ people.
“Though we have kind of gone on largely focusing on selling bubbletea and lattes and hosting shows since June, that this is still important to the attorney general’s office and to the state of New Hampshire is a demonstration to our community that we belong here,” Soldati said.
In his previous complaint, Formella accused Hood and another NSC-131 member of violating civil rights law when they hung a banner along a New Hampshire highway that read, “Keep New England White.” The charges were dismissed in June.
Gens said that since the case was dismissed, Hood has been “keeping kind of quiet” and paying attention to his newborn child.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell’s office also filed a complaint against Hood and the neo-Nazi group last week, accusing them of violating the state’s civil rights laws in a series of incidents between July 2022 and October 2023.
Within the last few years, anti-LGBTQ demonstrations and acts of violence against the community have surged. Demonstrations against drag events and performances have been particularly pronounced.
Between June 1, 2022 and May 20, 2023, there were more than 200 anti-drag incidents across the nation, according to a June report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The report also found that there were more demonstrations within the first five months of this year than in the last seven months of last year.
Florida officials temporarily barred a transgender student from participating in any of her high school’s sports teams, saying the teenager violated state law by playing on the girls volleyball team.
In a letter sent Tuesday to the unnamed student’s school, Monarch High School in Coconut Creek, officials from the Florida High School Athletic Association said the trans teenager was “declared ineligible to represent any member school” and therefore barred from competing on any school sports team for just under a year.
Officials also placed the South Florida high school on probation for 11 months, fined it $16,500 and mandated that its staff undergo a series of compliance trainings.
The state’s penalties come just a few weeks after the high school’s principal and several other school officials were reassigned after county officials opened an investigation into “allegations of improper student participation in sports,” flagged by an anonymous tipster.
A spokesperson for Broward County Public Schools confirmed Wednesday that the district received the Florida High School Athletic Association’s letter and that its investigation into the matter is ongoing.
Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group which is serving as the trans student’s legal representation, condemned the state’s action’s in a statement Tuesday.
“Today’s determination by the Florida High School Athletics Association does not change the fact that the law preventing transgender girls from playing sports with their peers is unconstitutionally rooted in anti-transgender bias, and the Association’s claim to ensure equal opportunities for student athletes rings hollow,” Jason Starr, a litigation strategist at the HRC, said in the statement. “The reckless indifference to the wellbeing of our client and her family, and all transgender students across the State, will not be ignored.”
Through the HRC, the trans student and her parents, Jessica and Gary Norton, declined to comment. The student’s mother did, however, issue a statement last week suggesting county officials outed her daughter by launching the investigation.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, signed a law in 2021 barring trans girls and women from competing on female sports teams in public schools. About half of the country’s states have similar laws restricting trans athletes’ ability to participate in school sports. A representative for the Florida governor’s office directed NBC News’ request for comment to the state’s Education Department.
The department did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment, but in a social media post Tuesday, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. commended the association’s decision to penalize the high school and the trans athlete and the state law that led to those actions.
“Thanks to @GovRonDeSantis, Florida passed legislation to protect girls’ sports and we will not tolerate any school that violates this law,” he said in a post on X. “We applaud the swift action taken by the @FHSAA to ensure there are serious consequences for this illegal behavior.”
The trans student at the center of Monarch High School’s sports controversy and her parents filed a suit over the sports law in 2021 against DeSantis, the Broward County School Board and several other Florida officials. The family argued that the state law violated Title IX, a landmark civil rights law that prevents sex-based discrimination at both public and private schools that receive funding from the federal government. A federal judge denied the family’s challenge to the law last month.
