Trans Formations Project Newsletter ∙ 11/18/22

Hello everyone! Today is 11-18-2022. Much has transpired in the last week. So much so, you think it would have been an entire month. The dust has settled around the midterms–Democrats have held onto the Senate with (at present) 50 seats to 49, with a runoff election in Georgia deciding the final balance of power. Yet, Republicans will (very narrowly) take the House of Representatives. Their lack of a strong majority and their lack of Senate control obstructs their immediate plans to pass federal-level trans legislation. 

That is the good news.

The bad news is that at the state level, they’ve been on an absolute tear as far as introducing new legislative assaults on transgender youth. 

Before we go any further, there are two action items that must be attended to:

1. As of November 14th, the public comment period for the proposed Florida Board of Medicine gender-affirming health care ban is open. The comment period is open for 21 days, until December 5th, 2022. We have developed a social media action kit explaining how to submit a comment here (assuming that Twitter has not been destroyed by the morning). 

2. The deadline to participate in the 2022 USTS has been extended until December 5th. You can take it here! 

And now, let’s get to it!

The Thing(s) We Won This Week 

While it has, in general, been a rough week, there have been some small victories we can take (momentary) comfort in. 

• The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has denied Arkansas’s request to remove its injunction upon its law outlawing transition procedures for minors. Currently, Arkansas’s law is one of the most extreme that has become law, and is currently being litigated. The trial itself resumes on 11/28/2022. 

• As a result of a complaint, litigated by Lambda Legal, the State of Nevada has removed rules that blocked transgender people from obtaining insurance coverage for facial surgery. For trans people living in Nevada, this is a crucial victory. You can read all about it here!

• While Ron DeSantis may have been re-elected, his attempt to force Universities to adhere to conservative ideologies has been blocked by a federal judge, who determines that it violates the First Amendment and describes it as “positively dystopian.” Predictably, the DeSantis administration is appealing the ruling. But it can be described as a setback. 

And now, we move into the meat. There’s a lot of it this week. 

What the Heck Happened This Week ?! 

Texas pre-filed multiple bills which would restrict the rights of transgender individuals.Seventeen on the first day, as a matter of fact. There are so many of these bills that spreadsheets have been constructed to make sense of them by actual lawyers. 

• The most insidious of the lot, HB672, has been described by activist Erin Reed as “the most horrifying piece of anti-trans legislation I've ever seen.” Here’s how it works: the bill is ostensibly a rules change regarding what counts as child abuse and what counts as sexual offenses. The long and short of it is that not only does this bill render it a felony for parents to consent to care for their children, for doctors to provide gender affirming care to children, or for mandated reporters to fail to out trans children and direct them to conversion therapy, but classifies these felonies as sexual offenses as well. In other words, under this bill, any parent who consents to doctor-recommended gender-affirming care would be a felon, which has the knock-on effect of forcing parent-child separation and restricting the ability of parents to flee to sanctuary states. Notably, the care system separated children would be thrown into has a long, sordid record of actually subjecting Texan children to sexual abuse.
   

• In Texas, HB42 was also released. This bill is similar to a bill introduced last legislative session and would classify gender-affirming health care as child abuse, equating it to child abuse such as sexual abuse and violence on children.

• In Texas, HB41 and HB112 were also pre-filed. These bills both ban health care workers from providing gender-affirming care. HB41 also proposes revoking professional liability insurance from health care providers who provide gender-affirming care.
   

• Texas also filed a sports ban, HB23, which extends last year's K-12 sports ban to college athletics, preventing college athletes from playing on teams reflective of their gender identity.
   

• SB162. This bill prohibits minors from changing their sex on their birth certificate. It also forces all birth certificates to have an assigned sex at birth declared. This is a severe crackdown, as it violates the ability of having anything resembling legal recognition of one’s affirmed gender in Texas.
   

• HB631 and SB165 would require parental consent before showing sexually-explicit content, which includes sex education and LGBTQ+ related topics. HB361 is for K-5 students, while SB165 is for students broadly. The rub, however, is in what is considered “sexually explicit content,” because…well….
   

• Texas also pre-filed HB708 and HB643 which classify all drag shows as sexually explicit without context and define any enterprise that hosts a drag show as a "sexually orientated business,” similar to strip clubs and adult bookstores. The text of the bill, however, effectively defines being trans as sexually explicit content. Here’s a list of things that the bill’s language could construe as sexually explicit. Now, consider this in combination with the above bullet point: if a teacher is transgender, and their teaching of a classroom is construed as performance, then them simply doing their job is now considered sexually explicit content warranting official parental consent. 

Tennessee pre-filed SB0005 which prohibits gender-affirming healthcare for “minors.” The bill defines minors as (1) people under 18, but also (2) people who have not completed the final stage of puberty (called Tanner Stage 5). This effectively bans adults who were on puberty blockers from transitioning as adults–while also punishing late bloomers (and ignoring the fact that Tanner Stage 5 is functionally complete puberty, and as such, blockers would be worthless anyway at that stage). 

In Ohio, HB151 was referred to the senate committee on primary and secondary education. This is a sports ban which would prohibit trans women from playing sports and would subject students to invasive physical exams. Not to be outdone, Ohio is considering its own bill to ban gender-affirming care, HB 454, This particular bill is insidious in that it has been altered to not specifically ban transition outright…but to ban it if there are “other” factors such as autism, anxiety, or depression. So, if a trans kid happens to be anxious and depressed because there’s a crusade against their rights perpetrated upon them by their neighbors and relatives…well, no transition for you! It must be noted that this bill has been extensively workshopped and revised–four times, as a matter of fact. There have been large turnouts testifying against the bill in hearings–including Jeopardy champion Amy Shneider. 

Ohio, further, has an ongoing deliberation over attempting to implement its anti-trans bathroom bans, misgendering rules, and forced outing in schools that it re-initated after the mid-term elections. The particulars of the resolution involves a wholesale rejection of Joe Biden’s Title IX changes and attempting to make the byline of the Ohio Board of Education a denial of the legitimacy of trans identities. Ultimately, they have failed to hold a vote this week, and have kicked the can down to December 13th. 

Illinois introduced SB4213 which explicitly bans transgender girls from participating in school sports.

Finally, Virginia also released a sports ban, HB1387, which bans students from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity.

In sum, the onslaught of bills for the coming legislative session has begun in earnest. Expect fairly hefty updates from us in the coming weeks–and try to grab peace where you can.