Mira Lazine

Transgender legislation trackers have universally noted that 2024 has seen the most radical increase in the total number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills. However, this year has also seen fewer anti-LGBTQ+ bills actually pass into law.

The Trans Legislation Tracker reports that 617 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been in consideration this year across 43 states, with 225 having failed and 348 active. However, only 44 total bills are reported to have been enacted into law.

The American Civil Liberties Union reports similar data—they say that 517 bills have been introduced, 340 defeated, and 39 passed into law. Journalist Erin Reed’s legislation tracker reports 760 total bills in consideration, with 565 failing and only 53 brought into law.

According to all the trackers, the total number of bills that were in consideration in 2024 increased significantly from the previous year. About 800 total bills are being tracked across the different trackers, each using somewhat different inclusion criteria. Last year, Trans Legislation Tracker reported 607 bills in consideration, the ACLU 510, and Erin Reed’s team 540.

These laws range from sweeping bans on gender-affirming care for minors to restrictions on what LGBTQ+ content can be discussed with minors to those that define trans people out of the law.

This reflects growing anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment among right-wing political operators in the country. Nationwide, anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes have dramatically increased, with the total rates quadrupling in states that have more anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Project 2025, a plan by the influential, right-wing Heritage Foundation to enact conservative policy should Donald Trump be elected, has support among politicians.

However, the data also reflects how the public does not support these laws.

More anti-trans bills passed last year than this year. Trans Legislation Tracker reports that 86 passed last year, in comparison to 44 this year. The ACLU reports that 84 passed into law last year and 39 this year. Erin Reed’s team reports that 81 were passed last year in comparison to 53 this year.

The Erin Reed tracker also reports that more pro-LGBTQ+ bills were passed into law this year than were anti-LGBTQ+ bills. Fifty-seven pro-LGBTQ+ bills out of a total of 616 were enacted, an increase in both counts from last year.

The data is unlikely to change from now until the rest of the year, as most state legislative sessions across the country have been brought to a close, with the majority of these bills failing to pass. Those that remain are likely to be rollovers, a type of bill that continues from one year into the next before being debated.

Lawmakers are more keen to fight these bills when they’re introduced, reflecting the broader views of their constituents. An NORC poll conducted in collaboration with the Los Angeles Times found that 77% of adults believe “elected officials are mostly using debates over transgender and nonbinary people to distract attention from more pressing priorities.”

A Fox News poll found that only 1% of voters believe “Wokeness / Transgender issues” is the most important issue today, and a Pathfinder Opinion poll sent to GLAAD finds that anti-trans policies motivate 53% of voters to vote against the politician, with only 25% being motivated to vote for them.

Gillian Branstetter, an ACLU communications strategist, said in a statement, “The end goal of anti-trans legislation is denying transgender people the words to describe our experience, the means to express it safely, and the community and support we all deserve.”

Houston surgeon Eithan Haim has been indicted on four felony counts after he shared public documents revealing the private information of transgender patients – in violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a federal law that protects patients’ medical privacy.

Haim leaked internal documents from Texas Children’s Hospital in 2023 to conservative activist Christopher Rufo, alleging that the hospital had violated Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s (R) opinion, which called gender-affirming care “child abuse.” Haim claims that the hospital continued to provide care up until the passing of S.B. 14, a gender-affirming care ban.

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“My client is a mandatory reporter of child abuse who reported as a whistleblower to the State of Texas what he had seen in his hospital,” says Haim’s attorney, Marcella Burke, in a statement given to LGBTQ Nation. “The indictment is under seal so my client remains in the dark of the basis for the charges against him.”

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Mandatory reporters for medical abuse concerns are required to first go to the Texas Medical Board and not journalists. Reports for child abuse concerns are required to first go to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

Burke details that no formal indictment paperwork has been sent over to Haim and his team yet. 

“We have asked the government to see the indictment, and the government has yet to produce it. We know from the Summons that he has been charged with four counts of criminal HIPAA violations, three with statutory counts of 10 years,” Burke continues.

LGBTQ Nation reached out to the Southern District of Texas’s Attorney Office to confirm the indictment and will update this article appropriately.

HIPAA regulates how healthcare professionals can share patients’ medical information with third parties and places strict limits in order to protect privacy. Haim claims he had a duty to report what he believed was child abuse, but the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services’ website says that they are the agency that needs to be reported to, not rightwing activists like Rufo. 

Moreover, Haim claims that the medical records he leaked to Rufo were anonymized, but Assistant Clinical Professor Carmel Shachar of Harvard Law School told Assigned Media that the records Haim leaked were not de-identified in compliance with HIPAA, meaning that people could figure out who the records originally belonged to. This could potentially make the children whose records Haim leaked targets for harassment and bullying.

In an interview with Fox News, Haim stated that he believes the charges were “politically motivated.” 

Shortly after Haim’s documents were released to the public, an investigation was conducted by Paxton into Texas Children’s Hospital’s alleged continuation of gender-affirming care. Houston Public Media reached out for an indication as to whether this investigation is ongoing but did not receive comment.

This investigation into Haim’s data leaks goes back to June 2023, when a federal investigation began and he was identified as a suspect. He turned down a request to speak to agents, electing to talk to his attorney first. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari led the investigation.

In January, Haim wrote a letter to Congress to denounce the investigation. Rep Chip Roy (R-TX) shared the letter on X.

While Haim has not become a household name during his time in the public light, he has garnered the favor of numerous conservative figureheads, especially in light of the indictment. His X account is filled with retweets from individuals like Colin Wright, Bari Weiss, and Chaya Raichik, all of whom have been heavily involved in efforts to discredit transgender care.

Haim has expressed numerous fringe views on his social media as well. In May, he claimed that trans women breastfeeding is “the plight of Western Civilization.”

He also said that former President Donald Trump’s felony charges were a “Stalinist show.”

Haim said that Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the United States through the COVID-19 pandemic, should be imprisoned. 

An independent investigation by journalist Evan Urquhart found evidence of Haim expressing such views directly in an interview with Rufo, believing that support for gender-affirming care is only an extension of the left-wing “capture” of medical organizations.

Haim has posted a fundraiser to cover his legal costs, which at the time of writing this article has garnered more than $500,000.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ruled that the federal Office of Personnel & Management (OPM) had discriminated against a transgender man who worked with the Federal Bureau of Prisons by denying him hormone replacement therapy. The ruling took over eight years.

Marc Lawrence had his first experience with discrimination in 2013 and filed a complaint with the EEOC over a decade ago in May 2014. 

Lawrence is currently a retiree, but he worked at the Federal Bureau of Prisons working for over almost 30 years. He received coverage through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, Blue Cross and Blue Shield Service Benefit Plan, and tried to get his insurance to cover three doctor’s visits and hormone replacement therapy.

His plan denied him this coverage, saying they exclude gender-affirming care entirely.

After taking two years to rule on the case, an administrative judge in 2016 ruled in favor of OPM. Lawrence appealed to the EEOC appealed, leading to an eight-year wait for a final decision.

Last week, a judgment was made on the appeal – ruling in Lawrence’s favor.

“It’s been a long journey, it’s a relief knowing that others won’t have to face the same blatant discrimination I first encountered in 2013. My case will serve as an affirmation of the rights that transgender individuals have under the law, and I’m deeply grateful for that,” said Lawrence.

Lawrence was represented by attorneys from Lambda Legal and Gilbert Employment Law, P.C.

“This is a huge win for transgender employees, confirming what a number of courts across the country have determined — that blanket exclusions for gender-affirming care target transgender people for discrimination and violate Title VII,” said Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Tara Borelli. 

“It took eight years, but at long last Marc Lawrence has gotten the justice and coverage he never should have been denied.”

Lawrence’s lawyers argued that this constituted discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans job discrimination because of sex. While his insurance plan removed the exclusion in 2016, he was still pursuing relief for the denial of care.

This care was granted to cisgender men who needed it and the gender-affirming care policy only applied to transgender people.

Shannon Leary, partner at Gilbert Employment Law, said, “The EEOC’s decision solidified a particularly salient protection under Title VII, as transgender individuals face a slew of discriminatory legislation across the country.”

“It’s clear that Marc Lawrence, like all transgender employees, deserves medical care just as much as his colleagues, and we hope that federal agencies, and all employers, take this as a sign of their obligation to treat transgender employees with fairness.”

Two Texan professors have filed a lawsuit against the United States government, arguing for their right to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and abortion history.

The plaintiffs in the suit — Daniel A. Bonevac, a philosophy professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and John Hatfield, an economics professor at the same school — are represented alongside Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) on behalf of the state.

The two professors are backed by America First Legal (AFL), a large conservative legal organization that files hundreds of lawsuits to whittle away LGBTQ+ discrimination protections.

The professors claim that the Department of Education is infringing on their rights by enforcing nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ individuals and those receiving reproductive care. 

They allege that this infringes on their rights to free speech, Texas’s right to sovereignty, and is a misinterpretation of rulings like Bostock v. Clayton, the 2020 Supreme Court decision that declared anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination as a form of sex-based discrimination forbidden by federal law.

“Bostock allows discrimination against homosexual or transgender individuals, so long as it is done pursuant to rules or policies that apply equally to both sexes and would lead to the same result if the individual’s biological [sex] were different,” AFL wrote in its lawsuit.

Bostock is widely interpreted as protecting against any and all discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals, and has been interpreted as such in the vast majority of court cases across the country.

The professors further argue that discrimination against individuals on the basis of their gender identity and sexual orientation does not constitute a violation of Title IX, a landmark 1972 law that protects people from discrimination on the basis of sex. The law is widely used to protect LGBTQ+ individuals as well as people’s reproductive rights.

“A teacher or professor… may refuse to accommodate a transgender or nonbinary student’s demands to be referred to by the singular pronoun ‘they’ — so long as the teacher or professor refuses demands for such pronoun usage on equal terms from a biological male or a biological woman and would equally refuse to honor the transgender or nonbinary student’s request if that student’s biological sex were different,” the lawsuit states.

The administration of President Joe Biden has said that Title IX protections extend to discrimination against those who have received an abortion. 

Hatfield and Bonevac, however, argue that those who receive abortions are “criminals” and as such should not receive accommodations in class, and that they should be able to reject any teaching assistant on the basis of whether they have received an abortion.

“Plaintiffs Hatfield and Bonevac do not intend to accommodate student absences from class to obtain abortions—including illegal abortions and purely elective abortions that are not medically required,” the lawsuit states. 

“Nor will Plaintiffs Hatfield and Bonevac hire a teaching assistant who has violated the abortion laws of Texas or the federal-law prohibitions on the shipment or receipt of abortion pills and abortion-related paraphernalia,” the lawsuit continues.

Additionally, they lawsuit argueS against “cross-dressing,” a term they use to refer to transgender students and teaching assistants.

The two filed their lawsuit in Amarillo, Texas — nearly 500 miles away from Austin. This is most likely due to the proximity to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointee known for pushing an extremist conservative perspective on sexual issues. In April 2023, Kacsmaryk issued a ruling saying that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should pull the abortion drug mifepristone from pharmacy shelves.

The United Kingdom’s government just issued an emergency order to temporarily ban and criminalize the usage of puberty blockers for transgender minors, independent journalist Erin Reed reports.

This criminalization is unprecedented and has not been seen in any other country. It could lead to prison sentences of up to two years, Jo Maugham of the Good Law Project told Reed.

Notice of the policy was sent out on Wednesday, when the U.K. Department of Health and Social Care announced restrictions on puberty blockers as an emergency order from Conservative Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Victoria Atkins.

The restrictions on puberty blockers include a grandfather clause for minors who are currently prescribed them by U.K.-based medical providers. However, this will effectively end transitional care for many. Due to the notoriously long waitlists from the National Health Service, the majority of those transitioning are doing so through private care via GenderGP, a private practice based in Singapore, Reed reported.

The emergency order bans the following medications: buserelin, gonadorelin, goserelin, leuprorelin acetate, nafarelin or triptorelin. The ban applies to England, Scotland, and Wales. It does not apply to Northern Ireland.

The ban starts on June 3, 2024 and will end on September 3, 2024.

Additionally, the ban does not apply to hormone replacement therapy, only puberty blockers.

Today, NHS England sent a letter to patients currently on the waiting list for puberty blockers outlining the restrictions. The letter stated, “It will also be a criminal offense to possess these medicines, where the individual had reasonable cause to know that the medicine had been sold or supplied in breach of the ban.”

This type of emergency prohibition is extremely rare. The last time it was used was 25 years ago, when a herb in Chinese medicine was linked to two deaths and had many experts from the UK government weighing in.

The restrictions follow others implemented in England, Scotland, and Wales earlier this year which paused additional prescriptions of puberty blockers. These prescriptions only applied to the NHS and allowed for private doctors to prescribe them still, something now voided by the current restrictions.

The NHS in England placed additional restrictions on the prescription of puberty blockers, continuing a trend in previous national legislation.

These restrictions are the result of the Cass Review, an infamous non-governmental review put out by Dr. Hillary Cass, a pediatrician who has never worked with a transgender patient. The review claimed that puberty blockers have minimal scientific backing proving their effectiveness.

Cass has met with officials appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to discuss Florida’s policies on gender-affirming care. She had Dr. Rittakerttu Kaltiala as an advisor to her review, a conservative media darling who has been making appearances in news outlets and courtrooms across the world to oppose gender-affirming care.

The Cass Review has been widely criticized for inaccurately representing the science on puberty blockers and gender-affirming care as a whole, particularly in regards to its dismissal of many studies within its literature review.

Additionally, organizations like the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) have rebuked the Cass Review, stating that it inaccurately summarizes the state of the science and should not have been relied upon for these sweeping decisions.

Cass dismissed the AAP as “left-leaning,” claiming they’re biased in their views. The AAP is a widely regarded medical organization, and Cass cited no evidence of its alleged political bias.

The Good Law Project is planning on a legal challenge to the emergency order, and is currently soliciting donations.

Former prime minister Liz Truss said to Sky News that she “welcomed” the ban. 

Representatives from the government called it a “landmark decision” and claimed it was in children’s best interests.

Trans healthcare advocates in the U.K. are outraged at the government’s decision.

Dr. Jo Hartland, an ex-NHS doctor, said, “I cannot understand the medical community’s silence and complicity in the direction trans healthcare is going If you aren’t campaigning for your trans patients I better not see a single one of you at Prides sharing some sh*t about ‘love=love’”

LGBTQ advocacy group LGB With The T said, “In an act of abuse and cowardess [sic], the Conservatives have decided that trans kids are worthless and do not deserve the same treatment as kids who aren’t trans.”

“They have banned trans kids from puberty blockers, whilst allowing kids who aren’t trans to carry on taking them.”

GenderGP said in a statement, “GenderGP are shocked at the attitude and behavior of the U.K. government in targeting trans youth. Gender reassignment is a protected characteristic under The Equality Act 2010, and it stands that every trans adult was once a trans child and we know that gender-affirming care has proven benefits.”

“We know that the interference in medicine and healthcare by the government will lead to serious harm for millions of patients and even death including those within the trans community. We remain committed to working with the government and the community to find solutions to prevent harm wherever it exists,” Gender GP added.