A federal judge on Wednesday struck down Florida rules championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis restricting Medicaid coverage for gender dysphoria treatments for potentially thousands of transgender people.
“Gender identity is real” and the state has admitted it, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle wrote in a 54-page ruling.
He said a Florida health code rule and a new state law violated federal laws on Medicaid, equal protection and the Affordable Care Act’s prohibition of sex discrimination.
They are “invalid to the extent they categorically ban Medicaid payment for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the treatment of gender dysphoria,” Hinkle wrote.
The judge said Florida had chosen to block payment for some treatments “for political reasons” using a biased and unscientific process and that “pushing individuals away from their transgender identity is not a legitimate state interest.”
An email seeking comment from the DeSantis’ office wasn’t immediately returned.
Hinkle’s harsh language echoed that in his ruling two weeks ago over a law that bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers. Hinkle, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, issued a preliminary injunction so that three children could continue receiving treatment.
The DeSantis administration and the Republican-controlled Legislature had banned gender-affirming treatments for children and a law that DeSantis signed in May made it difficult — even impossible —for many transgender adults to get treatment.
The latest ruling involved a lawsuit filed last year on behalf of two adults and two minors, but advocacy groups estimate that some 9,000 transgender people in Florida use Medicaid to fund their treatments.
Hinkle also addressed the issue of whether gender-affirming treatments were medically necessary and noted that transgender people have higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicide than the general population.
Transgender medical care for minors is increasingly under attack — Florida is among 19 states that have enacted laws restricting or banning treatment. But it has been available in the United States for more than a decade and is endorsed by major medical associations.
The American College of Pediatricians, a small, right-wing extremist group of physicians who for two decades has struggled to gain traction finds itself for the first time with more power than it has ever had as the far-right takes greater hold on America.
But along with their new-found power comes a deep dive into at least 15 years worth of their internal documents, the result of the group reportedly publishing a link to its own unsecured Google drive in April, which WIRED uncovered and reported on back in May.
The Washington Post combed through 10,000 of the group’s documents, and on Thursday publishing its exposé on the American College of Pediatricians, which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an anti-LGBTQ hate group.
“The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a fringe anti-LGBTQ hate group that masquerades as the premier U.S. association of pediatricians to push anti-LGBTQ junk science, primarily via far-right conservative media and filing amicus briefs in cases related to gay adoption and marriage equality,” SPLC writes in its extensive report.
According to The Washington Post, the American College of Pediatricians is a “small group of conservative doctors” that “has sought to shape the nation’s most contentious policies on abortion and transgender rights by promoting views rejected by the medical establishment as scientific fact.”
The American College of Pediatricians promotes the discredited practice of “conversion therapy,” which has been called “torture” by some who have been subjected to it. Conversion therapy, which purports to change a human being’s sexual orientation or gender identity, is outlawed in several states, while most credible medical organizations have denounced it.
The group’s success comes at the expense of transgender youth.
“The organization’s quest to ban the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors has culminated in a string of recent legislative wins following lobbying in at least eight states, internal documents show,” The Post reports. “Arkansas first enacted such a law in 2021, after Michelle Cretella, then executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, described such care as ‘experimental and dangerous‘ to legislators. A federal appeals court temporarily blocked it.”
“Versions of the law have since passed at least 20 other state legislatures, including Florida, Idaho, Indiana, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Missouri, Montana, Texas, North Dakota and Louisiana this spring alone; some face court challenges and one was vetoed by a governor. Similar bills are making their way through legislatures in North Carolina and Ohio.”
In other words, lawmakers in about half the country are working to harm transgender children, with the help of the American College of Pediatricians.
Also among the American College of Pediatricians’ more dangerous efforts over the years have been its attacks on homosexuality.
“Internal records from 2010 show how the group tied homosexuality to health risks — even death — in a letter campaignto educators, citing a 1991 study to demonstrate that for each year adolescents delay ‘self-labeling as ‘gay’,’ the risk of suicide decreases by 20 percent.”
That claim we know today is false.
“According to more recent research, suicide risk rises with therapy directed at changing sexual orientation. Lesbian, gay and bisexual people who experienced conversion therapy were almost twice as likely to think about suicide and to attempt suicide compared with peers who had not experienced conversion therapy, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law,” The Post adds.
2010 may seem like light years ago, but LGBTQ rights were very much a large part of the national conversation back then.
In 2010, President Barack Obama directed the federal government to extend spousal benefits to same-sex couples. A critical portion of the anti-LGBTQ federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, was ruled unconstitutional by a federal court. President Obama also signed into law the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that year. And a federal judge ruled California’s infamous Prop 8 was unconstitutional.
But also in 2010, just as LGBTQ people were starting to be able to access the rights and recognition they had always been denied, the American College of Pediatricians sent a letter, The Post reports, “to 14,800 public school superintendents [that] urged school officials not to affirm any student expressing homosexuality. It directed them to a website operated by the group that pushed ‘sexual reorientation therapy’ for those with ‘unwanted homosexual attractions.’”
The Heritage Foundation, a once-vaunted right-wing think tank that has succumbed to pro-Trump MAGA far-right extremism, is a big fan of the American College of Pediatricians.
“They have had the courage to take stands in court and to speak as medical professionals in relating their experience when it comes to questions of human dignity in unborn life, freedom of conscience, and the protection of children,” Roger Severino, Heritage’s vice president of domestic policy, told The Post.
Severino, a far-right religious extremist, served in the Trumpadministration as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights.
In its report on Thursday, The Washington Post adds that Severino “said [he] relies on the American College of Pediatricians for scientific expertise.”
Amplifying far-right wing anger that the LGBTQ Pride flag was hanging from the White House during President Joe Biden’s historic Pride celebration over the weekend, the Heritage Foundation lashed out, attacking the entire LGBTQ community and the Biden administration.
On Wednesday the Heritage Foundation declared that the LGBTQ Pride flag “does not represent anything good and it certainly does not represent America.”
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) signed two anti-trans bills targeting kids into law on Wednesday, one banning gender-affirming care for trans youth and one banning trans women and girls from playing on women’s sports teams.
S.B. 49, the “Missouri Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act”, is set to take effect on August 28 and bans all gender-affirming treatments (including reversible puberty blockers) until August 2027. Any healthcare providers who violate the law risk losing their license. Some states that have passed gender-affirming care bans have required trans youth already receiving this care to wean themselves off their medications and detransition, but this law allows those already undergoing care to continue.
“We support everyone’s right to his or her own pursuit of happiness,” Parson tweeted upon signing the bill. “However, we must protect children from making life-altering decisions that they could come to regret in adulthood once they have physically and emotionally matured.”
The anti-trans sports bill, S.B. 39, says both private and public schools all the way through college must require trans youth to play on sports teams according to their sex assigned at birth.
In his tweet about the bill, Parson declared that inclusivity was unjust “nonsense.”
“Women and girls deserve and have fought for an equal opportunity to succeed, and we stand up to the nonsense and stand with them as they take back their sport competitions. In Missouri, we support real fairness, not injustice disguised as social righteousness.”
LGBTQ+ advocates have roundly condemned the legislation.
“These bills represent a two-pronged approach to targeting trans youth and eliminating their stories, their perspectives, and their right to a happy, healthy childhood,” said Human Rights Campaign state legislative director and senior counsel Cathryn Oakley in a statement. “SB 49 tosses aside decades of scientific research and guidance from every major medical and mental health organization, representing over 1.3 million American doctors, in favor of the discriminatory whims of politicians in Jefferson City.”
Shira Berkowitz, senior director of public policy and advocacy for Missouri advocacy group PROMO said Parson has “showed just how little Missouri’s state government values LGBTQ+ lives and, in particular, transgender and gender-expansive youth. Berkowitz added that the laws are part of an “embarrassing history of elected leaders intentionally taking action to harm transgender Missourians.”
It’s a pivotal time for the trans community. Anti-trans lawmakers have rushed to restrict trans rights at every turn. By mid-May, 110 anti-trans bills had advanced for votes in state legislatures across the country.
NCTE helped to defeat 66 of them.
Pride is a time to celebrate these wins, to remember our collective strength, and to joyfully resist queer and trans oppression.
Trans people have always been here. We’ll always be here – no matter how hard our opposition tries to change that. In the face of threats to our rights and safety, we will protect each other.
This Pride month, we’re fundraising for trans rights in the lead up to Give OUT Day. This is a perfect opportunity to show your solidarity with the trans community.
Donate $10 or more to the National Center for Transgender Equality today. Your donation could help us win up to $10,000 from Horizons Foundation to protect trans rights!
Ready to go further?Click here to start your own fundraiser for NCTE andencourage your friends and family to donate. It only takes a few minutes to set up, and it will make a huge difference for trans rights, safety, and joy!
We truly appreciate your support. All of us at NCTE hope you have a powerful, fearless, and celebratory Pride!
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s gender-affirming care ban for transgender youth.
The organization is suing alongside other groups and law firms on behalf of two families who believe the law violates the U.S. Constitution. It is the eighth lawsuit filed by the ACLU and its affiliates against trans health care bans, according to the Los Angeles Blade. Lawsuits have also been filed in Arkansas, Nebraska, Montana, Oklahoma, Indiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
“This law is a dangerous intrusion upon the rights and lives of Idaho families,” said Amy Dundon, a Legislative Strategist with the ACLU of Idaho. “Our state should be a safe place to raise every child, including transgender youth, and HB 71 threatens to deny them the safety and dignity they deserve. We welcome this opportunity to defend the transgender youth of Idaho and their families from this discriminatory political attack and we won’t stop defending them until each one has all the care and support they need to thrive.”
The lawsuit calls the legislation “an unprecedented intrusion into families’ fundamental autonomy” and says it “preempts Idaho parents’ (and doctors’) judgment about what is best for their own children.”
One of the anonymous plaintiffs, a 16-year-old trans girl, said it has been a “long journey” to living as her true self.
“My medical care has been an important part of that journey,” she said. “My family, my doctors, and I have worked together to make decisions about my medical care, and it’s shocking to have politicians take those decisions away from us. Trans people like myself deserve the same chance at safety and liberty as everyone else, but this law specifically targets us and our health care for no good reason. I’m 16 – I should be hanging out with my friends and planning my future instead of fighting my State for the health care I need.”
Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) signed H.B. 71 in early April. It is considered one of the nation’s most punitive bans on gender-affirming care for trans youth. The bill made providing such care to a trans person under the age of 18 a felony with a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Only one other state, Alabama, has made it a felony to provide gender-affirming care. The 11 other states that ban such care have imposed administrative penalties like the loss of a healthcare provider’s medical license.
The Idaho bill bans gender-affirming surgery from being performed on trans minors, though such surgeries aren’t performed on minors. The bill also bans doctors from prescribing puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy to people under the age of 18.
Puberty blockers are reversible, life-saving medications that delay the permanent effects of puberty so that young people and their families have more time to understand their identities. Puberty blockers don’t work if they’re taken years after the onset of puberty.
“We are determined to protect the transgender youth of Idaho, their families, and their medical providers from this unjust and dangerous attack on their rights and lives,” said Li Nowlin-Sohl, a Senior Staff Attorney at the LGBTQ & HIV Project with the ACLU. “This health care is supported by every major medical organization in the U.S. and is critical for the futures of transgender youth across the state. We will not rest until this unconstitutional law is struck down.”
The legal team of a transgender woman incarcerated in Minnesota on Thursday announced she will be transferred to a women’s prison as part of a landmark settlement with the state’s Department of Corrections. The settlement also guarantees affirmative medical care and appropriate housing for other trans prisoners.
Christina Lusk, 57, sued the Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) last year when they denied her gender-affirming medical care and housed her in a men’s prison after she pled guilty to a drug charge in 2019. Lusk came out as transgender and started hormone replacement therapy in 2008, and legally changed her name in 2018. At the time of her arrest the following year, she was consulting with doctors regarding gender-affirming surgery at the time of her arrest.
As part of its settlement, the DOC agreed to move Lusk from MCF Moose Lake, a men’s prison facility to MCF Shakopee, a women’s facility. The DOC also agreed to provide Lusk with an objective third-party medical provider to determine Lusk’s suitability for gender-affirming surgery. If deemed suitable, the DOC agreed to pay for the treatment and cover out-of-pocket expenses after her release from prison if certain conditions are met, such as obtaining health insurance. The DOC also agreed to abide by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) standards of care for other trans inmates, and contract with a WPATH certified health care provider to provide training and support.
Lusk was in represented in her suit by lawyers from Gender Justice and Robins Kaplan LLC.
“As part of settling the lawsuit and in accordance with the DOC’s new transgender policy, the DOC has agreed to provide [Lusk] access to a transgender healthcare specialist to determine if gender-affirming surgery is medically necessary,” the DOC said in a statement. “The DOC will also assist her in obtaining surgery if the specialist determines it is necessary.”
“With this settlement, the Department of Corrections takes an important and necessary step toward fulfilling its responsibilities to the people in its care,” Jess Braverman, legal director for Gender Justice, said in a statement. “Thanks to Christina Lusk’s willingness to speak out, transgender people in custody will now have expanded access to the housing and health care they need, and the legal protections they deserve.”
A federal judge temporarily blocked portions of a new Florida law that bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers, ruling Tuesday that the state has no rational basis for denying patients treatment.
“The elephant in the room should be noted at the outset. Gender identity is real. The record makes this clear,” Hinkle said, adding that even a witness for the state agreed.
Transgender medical treatment for minors is increasingly under attack in many states and has been subject to restrictions or outright bans. But it has been available in the United States for more than a decade and is endorsed by major medical associations.
Hinkle’s ruling was narrowly focused on the three children whose parents brought the suit.
Hinkle said people who mistakenly believe gender identity is a choice also “tend to disapprove all things transgender and so oppose medical care that supports a person’s transgender existence.”
Research suggests that transgender youth and adults are prone to stress, depression and suicidal thoughts, and the evidence is mixed on whether treatment with hormones or surgery resolves those issues.
Even ahead of contemplating medical treatment, experts agree, allowing children to express their gender in a way that matches their identity is beneficial, such as letting children assigned male at birth wear clothing or hairstyles usually associated with girls, if that is their wish.
“There are risks attendant to not using these treatments, including the risk — in some instances, the near certainty — of anxiety and depression and even suicidal ideation. The challenged statute ignores the benefits that many patients realize from these treatments and the substantial risk posed by foregoing the treatments,” Hinkle said.
He also noted that hormone treatments and puberty blockers are often used to treat non-transgender children for other conditions, so the law makes their use legal for some, but not for others.
The three children in the lawsuit will “suffer irreparable harm” if they cannot begin puberty blockers, Hinkle said.
“The treatment will affect the patients themselves, nobody else, and will cause the defendants no harm,” Hinkle said.
The governor’s office didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment.
A library in Montana has canceled a transgender Cheyenne woman guest speaker, saying that her appearance at the library could violate the state’s new drag ban.
Adria Jawort – who made headlines last year when she won a lawsuit against a conservative, straight, white male pastor who called her mentally ill – was set to speak at the Butte Public Library last Friday as part of the library’s Pride Month programming. She was going to speak about “Montana History of Two-Spirit and LGBTQ+ Peoples.”
But the library canceled her appearance on Thursday afternoon. A librarian emailed her and said that the county “decided that it is too much of a legal risk to have a transgendered person in the library. I really regret this.”
Butte-Silver Bow city-county Chief Executive J.P. Gallagher cited the state’s new law, H.B. 359, which is intended to ban drag story hours. The law bans both drag queens and kings from reading in front of children. It also defines both as “a male or female performer who adopts a flamboyant or parodic” male or feminine persona “with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup.”
Gallagher still proclaimed June Pride Month at the Butte-Silver Bow Courthouse that same day.
Gallagher said that he would have let the performance happen if not for the state law. “But we would be in violation of state law if we allowed this person to give her presentation,” he said. According to Jawort’s Substack, Gallagher was reportedly getting legal advice from County Attorney Eileen Joyce.
Jawort said that she testified in the state legislature against the drag ban.
“I did so by explicitly doing a little dance (it was the beginning of the dance by that robot girl in the M3GAN) and saying that this bill’s broad definition targets trans people, what I had just done would be illegal under it,” she wrote. “Then I explained First Amendment Law to them – which seemed to be beyond their comprehension.”
Jawort said that there was already going to be a police presence at her lecture on Friday because the library “had been receiving harassing calls” about it.
“Now, what we have here is like a version of 21st Century ‘masquerade laws’ used to target trans people with back in the 1950s and 60s with [SIC] to arrest them for wearing articles of clothing of the opposite ‘biological’ gender,” she wrote.
In 2021, pastor J.D. Hall, a former darling of the far-right wing in Montana, called Jawort a “Gothic Transvestite,” called her “mannish,” and said she was mentally ill because she is trans. He also said that she threatened state officials.
She sued him for libel and they reached a settlement involving Hall paying Jawort $250,000, retracting the libelous article from his website, and publicly apologizing to Jawort.
“I apologize to Adrian Jawort,” Hall’s public apology in 2022 said. “The information I published about Adrian was false. Adrian did not threaten or harass Senator Butch Gillespie. I regret the error and sincerely apologize to Adrian for publishing it.”
The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund has sued the state of Tennessee over the exclusion of transition-related care from the state’s health insurance plan.
In the suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, TLDEF is representing a current participant in the plan and a former one. Gerda Zinner (pictured, left), an academic adviser at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, is a trans woman who was denied surgery because the state’s public employee health plan, the State of Tennessee Comprehensive Medical and Hospitalization Program, categorically excludes coverage for transgender-related health care. Story VanNess is a trans woman who was a special education teacher for Knox County Schools for five years, was enrolled in the state’s plan but was also denied coverage for gender-affirming surgery.
The state covers the same procedures for cisgender people to treat injuries, illnesses, or other conditions but excludes them for the purpose of gender transition.
“The only reason the State of Tennessee refuses to provide these women with coverage for medically necessary health care is because they are transgender,” Ezra Cukor, TLDEF staff attorney, said in a press release. “This is clearly unlawful discrimination that jeopardizes the health of hardworking state employees and their families.”
“It took years of careful consideration before I was finally in a position to move forward with surgical care, an important part of my transition,” Zinner said in the release. “Knowing that the only reason I can’t get the care that my doctors and I have decided that I need is because I’m transgender is hurtful and makes me feel second-class.”
“Working with students who have special needs was one of the greatest joys of my life, but it was excruciating to be denied coverage for needed health care simply because I’m transgender,” VanNess added.
The suit argues that Tennessee officials are violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by unlawfully discriminating based on sex and transgender status.
“Federal laws protect transgender people from workplace discrimination on the basis of sex,” Darren Teshima, partner at Covington & Burling LLP, which is handling the suit with TLDEF and other attorneys, said in the release. “This lawsuit seeks to ensure that the State of Tennessee and its affiliates stop wrongfully excluding medically necessary transition-related care from their employee health care plans. Covington is very proud to partner with our co-counsel and clients in this important work.”
Over the last year, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Utah — four states bordering New Mexico — have all banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Meanwhile, New Mexico passed two laws ensuring that such care will remain legal statewide and that no government entities will ever help another state prosecute someone who obtains or provides that care.
As a result, New Mexico is quickly becoming a refugee state for those escaping their state’s anti-trans policies. That creates a unique challenge for the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico (TGRCNM). The Albuquerque-based center is the state’s only brick-and-mortar center run by trans people, for trans people.
“We’re geographically situated in between states that are struggling with treating people like human beings and allowing folks to have the bodily autonomy to take care of themselves in whatever way suits them best,” TGRCNM’s executive director T. Michael Trimm tells LGBTQ Nation. “So folks are fleeing here in droves.”
It’s difficult to quantify how many trans people have migrated to avoid trans healthcare bans. At least 17 states nationwide have passed laws restricting or banning such care for minors. Other states have also recently passed laws denying trans people restroom access, sports teams, and pronouns matching their gender identities.
While Republican legislators claim such laws are necessary to protect children from “indoctrination” and harm, opponents accuse the GOP of inserting itself between families and doctors as part of its larger culture war on queer people, leaving some no choice but to flee their home states.
New Mexico’s laws mimic those of California, Minnesota, and other “sanctuary states” which promise to protect the right to gender-affirming healthcare for youth and their families. As a result, out-of-state immigrants have increasingly sought help at TGRCNM, turning the Center into a sort of “trans Ellis Island,” Trimm says, referring to the New York center in the early 1900s that processed European immigrants and refugees.
The influx is challenging the TGRCNM to meet additional people’s needs in an already under-resourced state, Trimm adds.
Statistics suggest that trans newcomers may suffer from higher rates of poverty, familial rejection, workplace discrimination, and other oppressions that result in increased houselessness, food insecurity, and poor healthcare. As such, some newcomers may need a lot of assistance to establish new lives.
While many larger cities in surrounding states have LGBTQ+ centers with programs to help trans folks, the nearest centers focusing solely on trans people are located in Missouri and California, both over 800 miles away, leaving TGRCNM as the only nearby option for untold numbers of trans people seeking support.
“We do not feel equipped to handle the needs of these folks,” Adrien Lawyer, TGRCNM’s co-founder tells LGBTQ Nation. Trimm adds, “This is incredibly overwhelming and has continued to stretch the limits of our capacity.”
A room inside the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico. Credit: TRCNM
The TGRCNM already offers “direct services” for trans people in need, including a drop-in center three days a week that provides showers, washers and dryers, prepared meals, an open donation clothes closet, a computer lab, a lending library, and workers who can help people access food benefits, healthcare (including STI testing, needle-exchange, and mental health counselors), legal services, as well as housing and employment assistance.
The center also offers statewide services, including assisting with name changes on government ID documents, providing trans body shaping items (like binders and gaffes), an online directory and referral for trans-friendly healthcare providers, a support program for incarcerated trans people, and also nine weekly in-person and online support groups for trans people of color, children, parents, partners, and others who live inside and outside of the state.
“We have grown so much since we started in 2007, but one of our challenges remains finding and sustaining the funding to do the statewide work that we set out to do here,” Lawyer says.
Trimm agrees.
“New Mexico isn’t the most resourced state, yet we are offering the most protections for folks,” he says. “Funding would allow us to further serve the people already in our state, who may be unintentionally harmed by the influx of [transgender and non-conforming] refugees who come to the state, occupying housing, which raises market rent for everyone.”
Lawyer says TGRCNM’s immediate mission is “to not let people die here in our local community,” but he adds that the Center doesn’t just “want to just be trying to patch up people’s bullet holes with band-aids all the time” either. The Center wants to keep shifting the state’s culture towards valuing trans lives.
Doing this requires progressive legislation to ensure that trans people will be able to thrive in peace throughout the state. Recently passed legislation has made New Mexico “the safest state in the country for LGBTQ people,” according to Marshall Martinez, executive director of Equality New Mexico.
This year alone, New Mexico passed House Bill 207, which added gender identity to anti-discrimination and hate crime laws; House Bill 31, which made it easier for trans people to legally change their names; House Bill 7, which forbids anyone from restricting access to reproductive and gender-affirming health care; and Senate Bill 13 is a “shield law” that forbids the government from assisting with any out-of-state investigations into people who provide or receive such care.
The latter two laws are especially important since Texas and other states have threatened to prosecute doctors and parents for “child abuse” if they help kids access such care. Similar laws also threaten anyone who assists in obtaining an abortion.
Martinez says New Mexico’s trans-inclusive laws passed thanks to a strong, cooperative coalition consisting of Equality New Mexico, the TRCNM, local Planned Parenthood affiliates, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the reproductive justice organization Bold Futures New Mexico, the healthcare access advocacy group Strong Families New Mexico, and a “ton of other groups.”
The coalition’s organizations regularly communicate with each other every day, he says. Throughout the year, they make sure one another’s issues are represented at meetings with community and political leaders across the vast state. Each organization also uses its pre-existing relationships with legislators to educate lawmakers about one another’s key issues, gradually introducing leaders to lawmakers over time.
These groups all share a common enemy, Martinez notes: conservatives who hate LGBTQ+ people — they’re the same ones who want to dictate people’s medical decisions, he says. As such, it made sense for the coalition members to support healthcare legislation that bundled abortion access with access for gender-affirming care.
“These are the only two health care procedures being criminalized,” Martinez says. “At the end of the day in New Mexico, either you believe that a patient can make decisions about their health care and their body or you don’t. And if you believe that, then you must believe it about everything.”
“Liberation is bodily autonomy, and bodily autonomy is the same regardless of whose body it is and what decisions you’re trying to make,” he continues. “The ability to decide whether or not I take hormones to transition my gender is equally as important as the decision I or my partner or sibling may make about having or not having children…. [It’s] the same level of bodily autonomy as being able to sue the cops when they harm you [or] violate your civil rights… which is the same as being able to make an adult decision about using cannabis.”
Under this reasoning, the coalition has helped pass other progressive laws, including ones that will enable residents to purchase a state health insurance option, enable cannabis entrepreneurs of color to benefit first from legalized sales, remove “qualified immunity” protections from abusive cops, and repeal older anti-abortion and anti-sodomy laws. Martinez doesn’t see these all as individual policy changes so much as the victories of a movement that has been successful on multiple fronts.
Granted, New Mexico’s Democratic-leaning electorate differentiates it from other states in ways that could make this strategy difficult to replicate elsewhere. New Mexico has a pro-LGBTQ+ governor, Michelle Lynn Lujan Grisham (D), and its legislature has been controlled by Democrats for almost all of the last 30 years. Its population of just over two million — 30% of which is non-white, including 21 indigenous sovereign nations — has helped Democratic presidential candidates win seven of the last eight elections.
I am deeply honored and humbled to continue serving our beautiful state as governor of New Mexico.
As I begin my second term, I will continue doing the work to ensure that the next fifty years are the greatest and most prosperous in New Mexico history – progress is our destiny. pic.twitter.com/0PPKDpHLAS— Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (@GovMLG) January 3, 2023
But Martinez says the state’s progressive victories at least disprove the idea that religious people of color are among the most conservative. “It has proven to be incredibly untrue amongst Hispanic, Latino, and indigenous Catholics across the country,” he says.
“People in New Mexico have been learning how to live with people of different cultural and religious values and backgrounds for 200 years,” he adds. “And at the end of the day, our values have always been that we love accept and affirm our neighbors, even when we don’t understand or agree with.”
He encourages advocacy organizations in larger states not to operate from a territorial and scarcity model, one that sees other progressive causes as a potential drain on an organization’s resources or influence. In New Mexico, he says, progressive groups inquire about one another’s legislation, asking how each can help apply equal pressure on legislators over a wide range of issues. Over the years, such coalition building has made it so that New Mexican lawmakers don’t pursue bad laws, he says.
It’s likely that the state’s trans protections will eventually be legally challenged by conservatives either inside or outside of its borders. But Martinez remains confident that the laws will withstand legal challenges, especially with a broad coalition supporting them.
“We’re not doing something radically new by protecting trans people,” he says. “We’re doing what we’ve always done, which is protect people from hatred and discrimination because that’s a New Mexican value.”
