With many states and the federal government adopting anti-transgenderpolicies, nearly half of the trans people in a Williams Institute survey have moved to a more welcoming state or are considering such a move.
The institute, located at the School of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, surveyed 302 trans, nonbinary, and other gender-diverse American adults in December to gauge the effect of Donald Trump’s election on them. They are referred to under the umbrella term “transgender” in the report. Respondents could remain anonymous. More than a third were people of color, and more than 40 percent had an annual income under $50,000.
Forty-eight percent had either moved to a more trans-friendly state or were thinking about doing so. Twenty-three percent had already made such a move.
“Respondents who lived in less supportive local communities, those in states with laws and policies that were less supportive of transgender people, and those with concerns about the impact of Trump’s presidency on their access to health care, exposure to discrimination, and vulnerability to hate crimes, were more likely to want to move to a state they viewed as more trans-affirming,” says an executive summary of the findings, released this week. “Those with lower incomes were also more likely to want to relocate, even though they may lack the resources to do so.” (The full report is here.)
“When asked more specifically what cities or states they want to move to, most respondents mentioned progressive cities or politically liberal states, with California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Washington Statefrequently named,” the summary continues. But many reported barriers to moving, particularly cost-related ones.
Among those working full-time or part-time in an unfriendly state, 14 percent were applying for jobs in more welcoming states, and 26 percent were considering this action.
Some respondents were considering international moves. Twenty percent said they very much wanted to move to another country, and 25 percent somewhat wanted to do so. There were barriers to this as well, including concerns about visas or other immigration regulations, health care, and language issues.
The anti-trans climate is affecting travel plans too. Thirty percent of respondents said they were traveling less frequently as a result of the 2024 election, and 70 percent said they would be much (48 percent) or somewhat (22 percent) less likely to go on vacation to states they view as less trans-friendly. About one-sixth said they had canceled travel plans to states they consider hostile or were considering cancellation.
“For those transgender people who do pursue relocating, service providers, businesses, and state and local governments should both consider the costs of losing members of their communities and support and welcome those who are making new homes,” the summary concludes. “Many transgender people will need resources to be able to move, and all will need to stay as informed as possible about what a move will and will not accomplish, given the rapidly changing policy landscape. Ultimately, whether or not most transgender people who want to move will be able to do so, the expression of a desire to move is a measure of the extreme pressure that transgender people are feeling about their and their families’ safety and health. Such pressure has mental health, physical health, and economic impacts on those who move and those who remain.”
“This survey was conducted in December 2024, so the desire to move and fears regarding travel for transgender people may be even more pronounced today,” lead author Abbie E. Goldberg, affiliated scholar at the Williams Institute and professor of psychology at Clark University, said in a press release. “Conversely, recent anti-transgender federal policies, which can affect even states with supportive laws, may have lessened the belief among transgender people that relocating will lead to significant improvement.”
“Whether or not the transgender people who want to move will ultimately be able to relocate, the desire to move is a measure of the extreme pressure that transgender people are feeling about the safety and health of themselves and their families,” added author Brad Sears, distinguished senior scholar of law and policy at the Williams Institute. “That pressure has mental health, physical health, and economic impacts on those who move and those who stay.”
An earlier release of the survey findings, which came out in March, noted that many trans people were worried about their access to gender-affirming careunder the Trump administration, were planning to downplay their trans identity, and were taking steps to protect themselves and their families.
A federal judge has upheld part of Iowa’s “Don’t Say Gay” law prohibiting discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation from kindergarten through 6th grade. However, the judge has blocked other parts of the law that sought to block students from voluntarily being exposed to school “promotions” and “programs” that acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people.
Iowa’s 2023 law S.F. 496 prohibits “any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion, or instruction relating to gender identity or sexual orientation” in grades K-6.
In his split-decision issued late last week, U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher (an appointee of former President Joe Biden) ruled that the law can restrict any LGBTQ+-related information in mandatory curriculum, tests, surveys, questionnaires or instruction can be interpreted in the way the state argues or required school functions.
“It does not matter whether the lessons or instruction revolve around cisgender or transgender identities or straight or gay sexual orientations. All are forbidden,” he wrote, according to ABC News.
However, he said that the law’s prohibitions on “programs” or “promotion” are so broad that they violate students’ First Amendment rights.
In his ruling, Locher said the law has compelled some school districts to remove visual representations of LGBTQ+ support, including Pride flags, safe space stickers, and materials supporting LGBTQ+-friendly groups, The Hill reported. It has also compelled some school administrators to tell teachers in same-sex relationships not to mention their partners around students.
“Students in grades six and below must be allowed to join Gender Sexuality Alliances (‘GSAs’) and other student groups relating to gender identity and/or sexual orientation,” Locher wrote in his decision, adding that teachers and students “must be permitted to advertise” those groups as well.
Locher said that teachers may mention same-sex partners or make “neutral references” to books with LGBTQ+ characters, so long as those “are not the focus of the book or lesson.”
He also blocked part of the law forbidding schools from accommodating trans and nonbinary students, noting that the law didn’t clearly define “accommodation.” However, Locher allowed the state to continue the law’s forced outing provision that requires teachers and school administrators to notify parents of a change in students’ gender status or pronouns, essentially outing them to their potentially unsupportive parents.
The ACLU of Iowa and Lambda Legal sued the state in November 2023 on behalf of LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Iowa Safe Schools and seven students and their families, alleging that the law “singles out Iowa students and discriminates against them based on their sexual orientation and gender identity” in violation of their First Amendment, Equal Protection Clause, and Equal Access Act rights.
Last March, Locher blocked a portion of the law that allowed for the removal of books with LGBTQ+ themes and references to sex acts. In that ruling, he noted that 3,400 books removed from schools weren’t explicitly obscene, despite claims from the state’s Gov. Kim Reynolds (R). Locher also noted that the law made a contradictory exception for the King James Holy Bible, even though it contains references to sex and brutality.
On Thursday, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk—a far-right federal judge in the Northern District of Texas with a record of aligning with the GOP’s most extreme legal positions—issued a ruling declaring that Title VII no longer protects LGBTQ+ people from workplace discrimination. The decision directly contradicts the Supreme Court’s landmark 2020 ruling inBostock v. Clayton County, which held that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is, by definition, sex discrimination. Kacsmaryk’s ruling marks one of the most alarming judicial rollbacks of LGBTQ+ rights in recent memory—and sets up a direct legal challenge to one of the foundational civil rights protections for queer and trans people in the United States.
The case was brought against the EEOC by the state of Texas alongside the Heritage Foundation, a central force behind Project 2025—an aggressive right-wing policy blueprint that explicitly calls for rolling back LGBTQ+ protections in federal law. In siding with the plaintiffs, Judge Kacsmaryk pointed to the Texas Department of Agriculture’s current employee policy, which requires “employees to comply with this dress code in a manner consistent with their biological gender,” specifying that “men may wear pants” and “women may wear dresses, skirts, or pants.” The ruling also upheld the department’s policy banning transgender employees from using restrooms that align with their gender identity.
The judge reached a verdict that Title VII only protects “firing someone simply for being homosexual or transgender,” but that it does not protect transgender or gay people from “harassment.”
“In sum, Title VII does not bar workplace employment policies that protect the inherent differences between men and women,” Kacsmaryk writes in his ruling.
Judge Kacsmaryk further argued that disparate treatment of transgender employees does not constitute unequal treatment, reasoning that “a male employee must use male facilities like other males”—a statement that erases transgender identity altogether. He extended that logic to dress codes and pronouns, claiming that requiring employees to adhere to clothing standards and pronoun use based on their assigned sex at birth is not discriminatory because it applies “equally” to everyone. The argument mirrors the discredited legal reasoning once used to uphold bans on same-sex marriage—that such laws didn’t discriminate against gay people because they, like straight people, were allowed to marry someone of the opposite sex. It’s a circular logic designed to mask exclusion as neutrality. It also flies in the face of the fact that Texas allows people assigned female at birth to wear gender “pants, skirts, and dresses” but denies that same right to people assigned male at birth.
Ultimately, Judge Kacsmaryk ordered the complete removal of all references to sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under Title VII from EEOC guidance. His ruling declares that “all language defining ‘sex’ in Title VII to include ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’” must be stripped from federal employment policy. Specifically, it targets and nullifies Section II(A)(5)(c) of the 2024 EEOC guidance, which states: “Sex-based discrimination under Title VII includes employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”
The ruling flies in the face of Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that Title VII protects LGBTQ+ workers from discrimination. The landmark case centered on Gerald Bostock, who was fired from a county job after joining a gay softball league, and Aimee Stephens, a transgender woman dismissed from a funeral home after informing her employer she would begin presenting as a woman. In a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that firing someone for being gay or transgender is inherently sex-based discrimination, and thus violates federal civil rights law. While Bostock focused on wrongful termination, it strains credulity to suggest that the same protections wouldn’t also apply to workplace harassment or other forms of discriminatory treatment under the very same statute.
This isn’t Judge Kacsmaryk’s first foray into far-right legal activism—it’s his trademark. He’s become the go-to jurist for plaintiffs looking to turn extremist ideology into binding precedent. He’s the one who tried to revoke FDA approval of mifepristone, a safe and widely used abortion medication. He’s ruled against LGBTQ+ protections in the Affordable Care Act. He even tried to force Planned Parenthood to pay $2 billion to Texas and Louisiana—a ruling so outrageous that even the deeply conservative Fifth Circuit tossed it. Now, he’s taking aim at Title VII itself, effectively inviting employers to harass and discriminate against LGBTQ+ workers by pretending Bostock never happened.
Two teenagers, one a juvenile, brutally beat a 19-year-old woman inside a suburban McDonald’s after making derogatory comments about her sexual orientation, according to local police.
The May 13 incident occurred at the fast food chain’s location in Carpentersville, Illinois, about 40 miles from Chicago, with officers responding to a report of a fight in progress, according to news release from the Carpentersville Police Department.
The victim, who was later identified as Kady Grass, sustained severe injuries and was transported to a local hospital, where she was treated and has since been released.
Following an investigation, the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office approved multiple felony charges against the suspects, according to police. John Kammrad, 19, was charged with aggravated battery, great bodily harm, aggravated battery in a public place, mob action and more. Kammrad was taken into custody on Saturday, while the juvenile suspect turned himself in on Friday.
Photos posted to a GoFundMe account for Grass show the extent of her injuries, which span her face and her legs. In an interview with NBC Chicago, Grass said the attack happened while she was in town to see her 13-year-old cousin’s choir concert.
“One hit me in the jaw and one was hitting me in the front, and then I didn’t realize that I was getting hit behind until a little bit later, like it took me a while to realize,” Grass said. “I was unconscious when they were stomping on my head, so I don’t remember that part, but my 13-year-old cousin does.”
Carpentersville Police Deputy Chief Kevin Stankowitz said the incident “underscores the importance of addressing violence and discrimination” within the community, according to the news release.
In an email to NBC Chicago, Stankowitz said the department collaborated with the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office on whether or not to file hate crime charges. After a review of the case, Stankowitz said, the office declined to file them.
A lesbian and retired Rhode Island firefighter was awarded nearly $2 million in damages in a lawsuit involving her accidental disability pension, which could balloon to $5 million after interest, local NBC affiliate WJAR reported last month.
Lori Franchina previously won over $800,000 in a separate lawsuit detailing the anti-LGBTQ+ abuse she suffered while working with her fellow firefighters.
Franchina joined the Providence Fire Department in 2002. She retired on disability in 2013 after she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder due to the habitual anti-LGBTQ+ abuse she endured on the job. She filed for accidental disability in 2011, but was denied by the retirement board. She sued and was awarded over $800,000 and declared eligible for disability by a jury in 2016.
While Franchina was given disability, it was general disability versus accidental disability, which pays at twice the rate and is not subject to income tax. She sued again and won. Lawyers estimate with interest, she will be eligible for a payday of up to $5 million.
Franchina’s lawyer, John Martin, said the retirement board has no one to blame but themselves for the loss.
“Two weeks before trial, we offered to go to mediation with them where the only thing we were seeking was for them to reopen the application and provide her with a fair hearing, and they refused to even discuss it,” Martin told WJAR. “They could’ve avoided millions of dollars that they’re going to pay on this judgment by simply giving her a fair hearing, and they refused to do it two weeks before the verdict came down.”
During the original trial, representatives from PFD tried to downplay the abuse Franchina received, but jurors heard a litany of horrific and even life-threatening examples in court. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit described the abuse she received in the decision written by Judge Ojetta Rogeriee Thompson.
“‘C**t,’ ‘b***h,’ ‘lesbo’ all are but a smattering of the vile verbal assaults the plaintiff in this gender discrimination case, Lori Franchina, a former lieutenant firefighter, was regularly subjected to by members of the Providence Fire Department (‘the Department’),” Thompson wrote in the ruling. “She was also spit on, shoved, and – in one particularly horrifying incident – had the blood and brain matter of a suicide-attempt victim flung at her by a member of her own team.”
“That was the incident that broke me,” Franchina said.
She said she welcomes the ruling because it provides her with financial security and the message of hope it gives to others in similar circumstances.
“It gives me my gainful income, it gives me the ability to not decide what bill I’m paying, it definitely provides me with comfort,” Franchina reflected. “I hope it helps somebody realize you can win.”
A Christian school in Georgia has forced a student to withdraw for bringing a transgender date to prom, just weeks before the senior was scheduled to graduate.
North Cobb Christian School in the Atlanta area recently held their prom off campus. But 10 days later, the principal called senior Emily Wright into their office.
“I was asked, ‘Is there anything we should know about the guest you brought to prom?’ Emily told Fox 5 News. “And I knew exactly what they were talking about, so I said, ‘Yes, he’s transgender.”
Her mother Tricia continued: “I got a call from the principal who said, ‘Ms. Wright, I’ve been informed that Emily brought a transgender guest to prom. Were you aware of that?’ I said yes. She said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, Ms. Wright.”
With that, Emily was forced to withdraw from the school.
The Wrights are still in shock. North Cobb Christian School won’t comment on the decision.
“It was off property. I did sign a form allowing her to bring a guest,” said Emily’s mom. The only limitation on the form was related to the guest’s age, she said.
Nothing in the school’s prom guidelines or the student code of conduct explicitly states LGBTQ+ individuals are not allowed to attend events, she told Atlanta News First.
“I feared this might happen,” said Tricia, but she thought the worst that could happen would be Emily’s removal from the dance.
“I cried very hard. I was just thinking that my entire future was in jeopardy,” Emily said. “‘Where am I going to go to school? Where am I going to graduate?’”
With just weeks left in the school year, Emily was forced to reenroll in a nearby public school so she could earn her diploma.
The decision to force Emily out was contrary to the school’s stated mission, her mother said, and not “kind”.
Among the school’s core values are “love for God, neighbor and self,” and “respect for people, property and ideas.”
“That’s not, in my opinion, a good example — to not be kind, not be loving, not be accepting, to be exclusive instead of inclusive,” she said.
The school’s principal and headmaster is Todd Clingman, a graduate of Liberty University, founded by anti-LGBTQ+ Christian conservative Jerry Falwell.
Clingman previously served as head of school at McKinney Christian Academy in McKinney, Texas, and as high school principal and acting administrator of Prestonwood Christian Academy in Plano, Texas.
North Cobb Christian School was founded in 1983 as a conservative evangelical Christian alternative to Atlanta’s public school system. Students from eight underperforming public schools in Cobb County are eligible to receive state funding of up to $6,500 per year to attend private schools in the area, including North Cobb Christian School, Baptist News Global reports.
In a letter to Clingman addressing Emily’s forced withdrawal, her parents said the “decision is not reflective of the Christian values you claim to uphold,” adding they believe the school made a “discriminatory decision.”
“The school chose to kick out a senior student just four weeks before graduation simply because Emily was being inclusive and kind,” the letter said.
A school in the Escambia County Public Schools of Pensacola, Florida, is refusing to call out the chosen name of a transgender student during an upcoming high school graduation ceremony or to print his name on his diploma.
The student’s supportive parents are now asking their son’s school to change their decision, saying it’s based on a vague and “unwritten” school policy that contradicts years of educators respectfully using their son’s chosen name in school.
The student’s mother, Charline Barger, said that her son will graduate from Escambia Virtual Academy on May 27. However, when she reached out to the academy’s director, Lisa Morgan, she told Barger that honoring her son’s request to be called by his chosen name would violate school district practice and “be a big hassle” since some students may use inappropriate nicknames, Barger told The Pensacola News Journal.
“It has been our practice to announce full legal names, as they appear on birth certificates and diplomas, at commencement ceremonies,” Escambia County Public Schools Superintendent Keith Leonard told the aforementioned publication. Barger noted that while her son has not legally changed his name to his chosen name, Morgan did agree to address him at the ceremony by calling out the first initial of his legal birth name, followed by his legal middle and last names, but his diploma will list his full legal name.
Barger has said that she wants to raise awareness about the district’s “harmful practice,” saying, “This is not just for him, but for any student whose identity isn’t being honored at this once-in-a-lifetime moment.” She said that many LGBTQ+ students experience supportive environments in the district’s schools and classrooms and that the support should continue throughout graduation.
“It’s about a student standing tall, hearing their real name called, and walking proudly across that stage. To deny that moment is to deny their identity,” she added. “It may seem like a small moment to those calling the names, but for the students on that stage, it’s everything.”
Florida has recently passed several anti-trans laws, including one that restricts instruction on LGBTQ+ issues in public schools; one banning trans students from playing on school sports teams matching their gender identity; one restricting trans access to bathrooms in any state school, state university, or government building; one preventing gender marker changes on birth certificates, state IDs, and drivers lisences; and another preventing state Medicaid funds from covering gender-affirming medical care for all trans people.
The restrictive laws have resulted in trans people and their families fleeing the state for “sanctuary states” with more supportive trans policies. An August 2023 survey from the Human Rights Campaign found that 36% of other LGBTQ+ adults want to or plan to move out of Florida because of gender-affirming care bans, and almost 80% of other LGBTQ+ adults feel less safe in the community as a result of bans on gender-affirming care.
A memorial to the long-ignored gay victims of the Nazi regime and to all LGBTQ people persecuted throughout history has been unveiled in Paris on Saturday.
The monument, a massive steel star designed by French artist Jean-Luc Verna, is located at the heart of Paris, in public gardens close to the Bastille Plaza. It aims to fulfill a duty to remember and to fight discrimination, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said.
“Historical recognition means saying ‘this happened’ and ‘we don’t want it to happen again,’” Hidalgo said.
Describing the sculpture that looks like a big star wand lying on the ground, Verna, a visual artist who also is a LGBTQ rights activist, said: “There’s a black side in front of us, forcing us to remember. … At certain times of the day, it casts a long shadow on the ground, evoking the dangers looming over, sadly.”
The other side of the star, silvery, reflects the sky. It represents “the color of time passing, with the Paris sky moving as quickly as public opinion, which can change at any moment,” Verna said.
Historians estimate between 5,000 and 15,000 people were deported throughout Europe by the Nazi regime during World War II because they were gay.
Jacques Chirac in 2005 was the first president in France to recognize these crimes, acknowledging LGBTQ people have been “hunted down, arrested and deported.”
Verna speaking next to Paris’ mayor Anne Hidalgo on Saturday.Kiran Ridley / AFP – Getty Images
Jean-Luc Roméro, deputy mayor of Paris and a longtime LGBTQ rights activist, said “we didn’t know, unfortunately, that this monument would be inaugurated at one of the worst moments we’re going through right now.”
In Europe, Hungary’s parliament passed this year an amendment to the constitution that allows the government to ban public events by LGBTQ+ communities, a decision that legal scholars and critics have called another step toward authoritarianism by the populist government.
GLAAD has announced the findings of its fifth annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI), an annual report on LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression online.
The in-depth report analyzes six major social media platforms — TikTok, YouTube, X, and Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and Threads — across 14 indicators that address a range of issues affecting LGBTQ people online including data privacy, content moderation, workforce diversity, and more. All companies are failing to meet basic standards across most safety metrics on the SMSI scorecard.
Offering a quantitative ranking and also highlighting LGBTQ safety policy rollbacks from major platforms, the report is a wake-up call for tech leaders and employees at major platforms and for all of Silicon Valley.
As the report shows, rollbacks from some companies eerily mirror recent changes to federal websites and communications that were implemented by the Trump administration from Project 2025 (notably, Project 2025 calls for “deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity.”)
In January, YouTube quietly removed “gender identity” from the list of protected characteristics in its hate speech policy, and Meta removed major components of its hate speech policy protections for LGBTQ people, including adding language expressly stating it is now allowed to refer to LGBTQ people as “abnormal” and “mentally ill.” In its policy revision, Meta also uses the terms “homosexuality” and “transgenderism” — a well-known, right-wing anti-trans trope — in reference to LGBTQ people.
Although YouTube claims that “our hate speech policies haven’t changed,” it is an objective fact that, sometime between January 29th and February 6th, the company removed “gender identity and expression” from its list of protected characteristics (the change is visible here in the current and archived policy page). The SMSI report calls out this unprecedented break from best practices in the field of trust and safety, stating that: “YouTube should reverse this dangerous policy change and update its Hate Speech policy to expressly include gender identity and expression as a protected characteristic.”
These shifts — among others — undermine the safety of LGBTQ people and other historically marginalized groups, who are uniquely vulnerable to hate, harassment, and discrimination online and off.
All companies are failing to meet basic standards across most safety metrics on the SMSI scorecard. Out of a possible 100, the platforms received the following scores:
“At a time when real-world violence and harassment against LGBTQ people is on the rise, social media companies are profiting from the flames of anti-LGBTQ hate instead of ensuring the basic safety of LGBTQ users,” said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “These low scores should terrify anyone who cares about creating safer, more inclusive online spaces.”
The quantitative methodology of GLAAD’s Platform Scorecard was created in partnership with Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) and research consultant Andrea Hackl. This year, GLAAD introduced a new scoring methodology that generated numeric ratings for each platform with regard to LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression. The Platform Scorecard focuses on the existence of policies, and does not measure the enforcement of those policies. The 2025 scores are not directly comparable to the 2024 scores due to extensive revising of the Scorecard methodology.
The Social Media Safety Index includes specific findings and recommendations for each company, and calls on companies to urgently and tangibly prioritize LGBTQ safety. The report also highlights the volume of online anti-trans hate, harassment, and disinformation that has skyrocketed in the past year, a trend that GLAAD has qualitatively examined in the SMSI report.
Alongside these rollbacks in LGBTQ protections online, GLAAD’s Anti-LGBTQ Extremism Reporting Tracker has shown a distinct upwards trend in offline anti-LGBTQ incidents in recent years. These include both criminal and non-criminal instances of harassment, vandalism, and assault motivated by anti-LGBTQ hate.
Social media platforms are vitally important for LGBTQ people, as spaces where we connect, learn, and find community. Although today’s social media landscape does indeed look dire, it is heartening that some platforms have implemented positive initiatives in the past year. For Pride month in 2024, TikTok created their LGBTQIA+ TikTok Visionary Voices List and YouTube offered the Celebrate Pride on YouTube LGBTQ creators spotlight. In this current moment, as LGBTQ people face unprecedented attacks on our civil and human rights, now is the time for all companies to stand up for inclusive values and provide LGBTQ communities with the safety protections we need, and the celebratory and affirming messages we deserve.
Key Findings of the 2025 SMSI include:
Recent hate speech policy rollbacks from Meta and YouTube present grave threats to safety and are harmful to LGBTQ people on these platforms.
Platforms are largely failing to mitigate harmful anti-LGBTQ hate and disinformation that violates their own policies.
Platforms disproportionately suppress LGBTQ content, via removal, demonetization, and forms of shadowbanning.
Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and disinformation on social media has been shown to lead to offline harms.
Social media companies continue to withhold meaningful transparency about content moderation, algorithms, data protection, and data privacy practices.
GLAAD’s Key Recommendations:
Strengthen and enforce (or restore) existing policies and mitigationsthat protect LGBTQ people and others from hate, harassment, and misinformation; while also reducing suppression of legitimate LGBTQ expression.
Improve moderation by providing mandatory training for all content moderators (including those employed by contractors) focused on LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression; and moderate across all languages, cultural contexts, and regions. AI systems should be used to flag for human review, not for automated removals.
Work with independent researchers to provide meaningful transparency about content moderation, community guidelines, development and use of AI and algorithms, and enforcement reports.
Respect data privacy. Platforms should reduce the amount of data they collect, infer, and retain, and cease the practice of targeted surveillance advertising, including the use of algorithmic content recommender systems, and other incursions on user privacy.
Promote and incentivize civil discourse including working with creators and proactively messaging expectations for user behavior, such as respecting platform hate and harassment policies.
GLAAD’s SMSI Platform Scorecard draws on RDR’s standard methodology to produce numeric ratings for each platform with regard to LGBTQ safety. This year, GLAAD added elements addressing emerging threats to LGBTQ people online as well as an indicator regarding content that promotes so-called “conversion therapy,” a practice that has been banned in 23 states and condemned by all major medical, psychiatric, and psychological organizations.
GLAAD and other monitoring organizations repeatedly encounter failures in enforcement of a company’s own guidelines for content moderation, including hate speech and harassment policies.
Specific LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression issues identified in the SMSI include: Inadequate content moderation and problems with policy development and enforcement (including failure to mitigate anti-LGBTQ content and over-moderation of LGBTQ users); harmful algorithms and lack of algorithmic transparency; inadequate transparency and user controls around data privacy; an overall lack of transparency and accountability across the industry, among many other issues — all of which disproportionately impact LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities.
“We need to hold the line — as tech companies are taking unprecedented leaps backwards, we remain firm in advocating for basic best practices that protect the safety of LGBTQ people on these platforms,” said GLAAD’s Senior Director of Social Media Safety Jenni Olson. “This is not normal. Our communities deserve to live in a world that does not generate or profit off of hate.”
About the GLAAD Social Media Safety Program As the leading national LGBTQ media advocacy organization, GLAAD is working every day to hold tech companies and social media platforms accountable and to secure safe online spaces for LGBTQ people. The GLAAD Social Media Safety Program produces the highly-respected annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI)and researches, monitors, and reports on a variety of issues facing LGBTQ social media users — with a focus on safety, privacy, and expression.
The average American spends over three hours on their phone every day, and nearly half of U.S. teens say they’re on the Internet almost “constantly.”
While most of us understand that not all of our data is private, the scope of how much U.S. government agencies can access is overwhelming: Internet history, private messages, health information, political affiliation and phone location data are all up for grabs.
“We are constantly shedding data as we go about our daily lives,” says Lisa Femia, staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights advocacy group. She says with no comprehensive Federal data privacy law, there’s little legal protection surrounding our digital rights.
This lack of regulation has unique implications for LGBTQ people, especially under the current Trump administration. In March 2025, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis removed protections for LGBTQ identities from its restrictions on gathering intelligence. That means queer people are no longer a protected class when it comes to surveillance efforts.
This occurred off the back of Trump’s January Executive Order, “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” that attempts to ban trans kids’ access to healthcare. In addition, laws banning gender-affirming care have passed in at least 24 states across the country, creating a perfect storm for the government to use digital surveillance to capture folks trying to access what advocates describe as “lifesaving” treatment.
“When our identities are being criminalized or stigmatized, record keeping, if it’s not done well, can be a massive, massive tool for oppression,” says Shae Gardner, policy director at the LGBT Technology Institute.
So what capabilities do law enforcement agencies and the government have when it comes to monitoring LGBTQ folks looking for resources like gender-affirming care? What are the implications for trans youth who are seeking this care out of state? And what can you do to protect yourself?
Data Brokers
One alarming way third parties—including marketers, scammers, private investigators, tech companies, retailers and law enforcement—can access your digital footprint is through data brokers. These businesses exist solely to collect individuals’ online data to sell for profit. They have access to highly sensitive data from companies, apps and websites that collect information on people. They also indirectly gather data from public records such as voting registries. In the U.S., their work is virtually unregulated.
“Data brokers can access our home addresses, telephone numbers, political preferences, location data, online purchases and much more,” says Gardner. “Users don’t even know that their data is available to be sold.”
There may be up to 5,000 data brokers globally, and out of the top 23 data brokerage companies in the world, 17 are in the U.S. These brokers have profiles on millions of Americans.
Through third-party apps, they can even access our health data, putting our sensitive medical information at risk. For example, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, privacy experts were concerned that data collected by Flo, the period tracking app, could be misused, given its history of passing the health details of its users to third parties.
Because of this, Femia says it’s becoming “harder and harder for people to get the care they need, the support they need, or be who they are, without leaving a trail that a hostile law enforcement agency or state government or federal government could use to target them.”
In some cases, the government has used the “Data Broker Loophole”—a gap in the Electronics Communications Privacy Act—to bypass legal requirements of obtaining warrants and subpoenas for data and instead purchasing it directly from private brokers. In Trump’s first term, it was discovered that his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bought cellphone location data to detect possible illegal border crossings.
One data broker, Babel Street, created a tool named Locate X—used by the Secret Service and DHS—which gathers smartphone location data to monitor people worldwide without a warrant. In practice, this is meant to help the government track serious criminal activities. But with increasing animus towards the trans community, it could potentially be used to track the movements of doctors working at gender-affirming care clinics or trans people seeking care.
“It’s not a federal agent following you home anymore. It’s someone tracking your location on your phone,” says Gardner.
While there are no documented instances of the government using this data surveillance to track folks looking for trans healthcare, that’s not the case when it comes to reproductive healthcare. In 2023, an Idaho woman and her son were charged with taking the son’s girlfriend to Oregon to get an abortion, using her cellphone location data as evidence.
And in 2024, one company used location data broker Near Intelligence to track people’s visits to nearly 600 Planned Parenthood locations across 48 states and sold the data to feed a massive anti-abortion ad campaign funded by Veritas Society, a pro-life activist group.
On a now-deleted page on the organization’s website, they proudly cite that they use Near Intelligence’s advanced digital technology known as “Polygonning” to “identify and capture the cell phone ID’s of women that are coming and going from Planned Parenthood and similar locations. We then reach these women on apps, social feeds and websites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat with pro-life content and messaging.”
Education
In addition to data brokers, American kids are being monitored when they use computers provided by their schools. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) reported an increase in surveillance software to monitor online activity on school-owned devices. In fact, 81% of teachers reported that their schools use some form of monitoring software and 71% reported it being used on school-issued devices, allowing schools to survey children outside of teaching hours.
“These tools provide teachers and schools with the ability to … view students’ email, messaging, and social media content, view the contents of their screens in real time, and other monitoring functionality,” CDT reports.
While companies like GoGuardian claim to use their surveillance tools to mitigate potential security threats and monitor students’ mental health, privacy experts warn that these tools put children in homo/transphobic states at risk of their data being weaponized by their educators and law enforcement.
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“Schools can specifically ask these programs to flag any LGBTQ content,” says Eleni Manis, research director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “So school surveillance software is already in place to provide a dragnet for flagging kids who are LGBTQ, or just exploring their sexuality.”
In 2023, EFF found that GoGuardian software in the Lake Travis Independent School District in Texas flagged over 75 websites with the terms “transgender,” “LGBT,” “gay,” “homosexual,” “non-binary” or “queer” in the URL. Websites that were flagged included the Wikipedia pages for the Transgender Rights Movement and for the portrayal of transgender people in film; an article from The Guardian about transgender history; and a page about the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C.
In addition to blocking kids from visiting LGBTQ-themed websites, states like Alabama have passed bills that require school personnel to inform parents if a minor expresses a gender identity that is inconsistent with their biological sex. School personnel can enforce these bills through the surveillance of school-owned devices.
“It’s going to disproportionately affect kids who are middle or low-income, kids who don’t have the resources to have their own private iPad or laptop,” says Manis. In states where gender-affirming care for kids is illegal, questions also arise surrounding what will be done with the data—will it be used to discipline the child or even shared with law enforcement?
Manis says this software turns schools into another branch of America’s invasive surveillance apparatus. “It’s very difficult for those programs to stop flagging LGBTQ students even if they want to. It’s the first place conservative, anti-trans or anti-LGBTQ districts can go to [for evidence],” she says.
Medical Records
Photo by Fotofrog.
Beyond the classroom, the medical information of child and adult patients is at risk of being compromised.
“Medical records give you a patient’s name, prescriptions, doctor’s name, practice name, everything that you need to launch an investigation or prosecution. Same thing for prescription records. Pharmacy’s prescription records will tell you who wrote a prescription, when it was filled, who filled it,” says Manis.
While patients speak frankly with their doctors based on confidentiality, there have been instances where local governments—and even doctors—have violated patients’ right to medical privacy in the name of criminal prosecutions.
In 2023, Dr. Eithan Haim, a Dallas surgeon, leaked sensitive data about children receiving transition-related care at Texas Children’s Hospital to a conservative activist who published the documents in a magazine.
Although what Dr. Haim did was illegal, the Department of Justice dropped their charges against him in January, the same week Trump passed the EO banning gender-affirming care for trans kids.
Additionally, in 2023, Vanderbilt University Medical Center handed over records for more than 100 current and former patients seeking transgender health care to Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti as part of an investigationinto possible violations of the Tennessee Medicaid False Claims Act.
“It’s a terrifying precedent because it works, even though it shouldn’t,” says Manis.
HIPAA laws permit disclosures of protected health information if they are made to prevent a serious and imminent threat to health or safety, creating a loophole for local governments to work around. “The loophole is large enough that when a law enforcement agency comes knocking at a hospital’s door and asks for medical records in connection with an ongoing investigation, states typically cooperate.”
In other words, if the Trump administration wanted to come for patients, there’s a model to follow, and HIPAA laws may not protect you.
Camera Surveillance
On top of all of this, automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are “commonplace” in policing. ALPRs are camera systems that capture the license plate data of passing vehicles. Nearly 90% of sheriff’s offices with more than 500 sworn deputies use ALPRs, as well as every single police department that serves over 1 million people.
“No specific federal legislative framework exists that governs federal law enforcement use of ALPRs,” according to a 2024 report by the Library of Congress. That means law enforcement agencies can access the data, store it for as long as they need, and officers are not required to demonstrate probable cause before accessing it.
A 2013 report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that license plate readers check plate numbers against “hot lists”—plates that have been uploaded to the system—to alert a law enforcement agency if a match appears. According to EFF, the data is often managed by private companies and data brokers.
In 2024, it was revealed that Sacramento authorities were collecting license plate data and sharing it with law enforcement agencies in other states. In their investigation, the Sacramento County Grand Jury expressed concern that the “data could be used to track individuals based on immigration status, place of worship, employment locations, or visits to places such as gun stores or hospitals. Particularly troubling was the potential sharing of ALPR data with other states whose citizens travel to California to seek an abortion, which has been banned or severely restricted in their home states.”
“By using camera footage surveillance, you can track where people are going and you might see a person going to a clinic, or to an LGBTQ center and use that to aid an out-of-state prosecution saying a parent let their kid get gender-affirming care,” Femia says.
How Can You Maintain Your Privacy?
Despite the various ways you can be monitored, experts say individuals can protect themselves from digital surveillance by using encrypted messaging apps like Signal and more secure search engines like DuckDuckGo. They also recommend using Virtual Private Networks to encrypt your Internet traffic. Finally, they recommend turning your phone off when going to protests or other LGBTQ-themed events so data brokers can’t track your location.
But there’s only so much individuals can do. “It’s really important that we don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this is our fault and our problem to solve, or that you can protect your privacy just by changing some settings on your phone,” says Evan Greer, director of digital advocacy group Fight for the Future. “We need to fight for policies that protect people. … The reality is, this is a collective societal problem, and it should be addressed at a broad scale by enacting policies that protect people’s basic human rights.”
States like California and New York are passing shield laws to protect individuals and cement themselves as data sanctuary states. These laws give consumers more control over the personal information that businesses collect about them and limit the disclosure of their personal data to out-of-state entities.
But “the way data travels doesn’t respect state lines. So the idea that there are differing protections once you hit a state border is kind of silly,” Gardner says. “Any time the states, no matter how well-intentioned, are attempting to build data protections, they’re doing it on a wobbly table that really doesn’t have a base because there are [no comprehensive federal protections].”
Greer cites the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation as an aspirational framework for the U.S. It’s a law enforced in 2018 that grants individuals the right to their personal data.
“What we really, really need is federal privacy protections. We need to enshrine rights to gender-affirming care in federal law. That’s the only thing that would truly protect trans and non-binary Americans. It doesn’t look like we’re gonna get that in the short run,” says Manis.
**For more information on how to control your data, the Digital Defense Fund has a presentation here.
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