The GOP-controlled Texas Legislature is once again targeting transgender people

If you thought the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature was done trying to make transgender people’s lives miserable, buckle up. Lawmakers are at it again.

With the 89th Texas Legislature scheduled to begin Jan. 14, GOP lawmakers have already filed nearly 40 anti-trans proposals for debate. Among those are bills to ban trans Texans from public restrooms and to stop them from changing the gender on their birth certificates. Another would allow minors taken to drag shows to sue for damages.

While anti-trans bills have been a fixture of state legislative sessions for nearly a decade, observers said Texas Republicans are emboldened this time around by wins in the recent election cycle that party officials chalk up to anti-trans political ads. What’s more, the bills’ backers know the Trump White House will offer zero pushback.

The onslaught of anti-trans legislation also will come amid a wash of other bills seeking to move the state further right, said Laura Barberena, a veteran San Antonio-based Democratic political consultant. Far from being able to stop it all, the Lege’s minority party’s best case scenario may be moderating the damage.

“This legislative session is going to be very challenging for Democrats, because so many of the things that we believe in and know are right — and that we know are basic human rights — are under attack,” Barberena said. “I don’t know that we have the resources needed to be able to confront every single one of those issues in a way that can be effective.”

Political observers said the flood of anti-trans legislation is predictable given the accelerating rightward shift of the Texas Legislature and the national sentiment among the GOP base. Polls show GOP voters as increasingly eager to push back against the rights of transgender people.

Even before Texas lawmakers began filing bills for the upcoming session, conservative lawmakers nationwide flooded state legislatures with a total of 669 anti-trans bills in 2024.

The numbers from the Lone Star State’s 2023 session suggest that even if Dems can band together with moderate Republicans to block the most egregious anti-trans legislation, some will get through.

The Lege filed a total of 140 bills last session targeting the rights of transgender people, and a total of seven passed, including laws that ban minors from obtaining gender-affirming care, curb trans athletes’ ability to compete and prohibit certain kinds of drag performances.

Johnathan Gooch, communication director for LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Texas, said his organization is ready for this session’s fight, adding that some of the bills that made it through last session — including the drag ban — have since been halted in the courts as legal challenges play out.

“We’re hopeful that we can stand strong against most of the bills that will be filed this session, and some of them that we’ve seen so far are just ridiculous, especially the one that would allow minors to sue over drag shows,” Gooch said. “I think many of the people that are in the capitol have enough common sense to shut down the worst of this legislation.”

Gooch added that Equality Texas and other organizations plan to fight disinformation about trans people by making doctors, experts and everyday Texans available to lawmakers to ensure they have the facts on their side.

“The best antidote to disinformation is just presenting truth,” Gooch said. “And in this case, it’s meeting a trans person. I think the issues become so much simpler when you meet a trans man with a full beard and a flannel shirt. There’s no question about which bathroom he should be using, and the notion of restricting that or changing his driver’s license is absurd.”

Focus on fear

As with the previous legislative session, much of the pre-filed legislation targeting trans people focuses on children. Some of the proposals would ban their access to library books on gender identity, for example, or increasing penalties for those who provide gender-affirming care to minors.

There’s a reason for that, said Amy Stone, a sociology professor at San Antonio’s Trinity University who’s extensively studied attacks on the trans community.

As conservatives faced increasing pushback from broad-scale legislation targeting LGBTQ+ people, the Republican playbook has shifted to going after the much smaller and less-understood trans community. Just 1.6% of U.S. adults identify as transgender or nonbinary, according to 2022 Pew Research Center data.

Efforts to strip trans teens and children of rights are even less likely to draw blowback because minors can’t vote, Stone added.

“This anti-LGBTQ rhetoric almost always centers around fears about children: things that could happen to children, what a child could turn out to be,” Stone said of the spate of recent legislation. “What we’re seeing very much fits in with that kind of rhetoric.”

Ultimately, such attacks also work as a smokescreen for lawmakers who are unable, or unwilling, to deliver on meaningful legislation for their constituents.

“Politicians know bringing up these things can be a good distraction from discussions about why groceries are so expensive, or whether your kids are in danger from gun violence, or what are other physical threats children actually face,” the professor said. “I think, for the most part, politicians who are very focused on concerns about transgender women in bathrooms aren’t concerned about gun violence in schools. There’s a real contradiction there.”

Just the same, Texas Republicans have dug into the strategy, and until polls convince them otherwise, they’re unlikely to let go of it, experts said.

“The American people and especially Texans that I represent, they’ve had enough of it,” State Rep. Brian Harrison, who represents a conservative district south of Dallas-Fort Worth, recently told the Texas Tribune of trans rights. “They’re forcing you to celebrate something that’s at odds with objective reality, and in many instances, forcing tax dollars to fund it.”

Action not words

While it may be tempting to write off sentiments like Harrison’s as out-of-touch and bans on drag shows as laughable and absurd, Gooch warns that the implications for trans Texans, especially minors, are real.

An increase in anti-transgender state laws from 2018 to 2022 significantly corresponded with a 72% rise in suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth, according to a peer-reviewed study from The Trevor Project, the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ young people.

Political observers also caution that new leadership overseeing the Texas House is also likely to give anti-trans legislation better odds of passing this session.

When conservative Texas lawmakers led by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick tried to restrict what bathrooms trans people could use in 2017, moderate Republicans including then-Speaker Joe Straus of San Antonio quietly snuffed out the proposal by preventing it from seeing debate on the House floor.

While it’s unclear as of press time Monday who will lead the Texas House next session, it’s a safe bet that person will be further to the right than both the retired Straus and the prior speaker, Dade Phelan, who became a GOP target after overseeing the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton and not enthusiastically backing Gov. Greg Abbott’s school voucher legislation.

Additionally, the Trump White House is unlikely to offer any legal resistance to Texas’ anti-trans political moves. Beyond spending $65 million on anti-trans campaign ads, the president-elect promised to investigate and potentially halt trans health care and has urged Congress to pass a bill declaring there are only two genders, both assigned at birth.

“I find it heartbreaking that Republicans choose to single out Texans who are just trying to live their lives,” political consultant Barberena said. “I wish they would practice more of the moral values that they preach, because if they did, we could make Texas a much more welcoming place for so many people.”

If those who are part of the LGBTQ+ community or consider themselves allies want to help stop the onslaught, they must do more than express outrage, according to Barberena. People need to show up in Austin and show up in force. And if they can’t, they must donate to organizations on the ground doing the work.

“More than ever, we need to get people more involved, and that does not mean going on social media and posting things and liking things. That is performative and not real,” she said. “People need to physically go to the Capitol. They need to show up in numbers, they need to express ideas. They need to get with a lobby organization and meet with legislators. To hang out on social media and somehow think that you’re participating in politics is not enough.”

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This article appears in Nov 28-29, 2024.