United States: the legislative wave against trans people

In the United States, the rights of transgender people have become the terrain of an unprecedented legislative battle. From 2021 to the present, state legislatures have produced over 3,000 bills restricting trans rights in areas ranging from healthcare to sports, from public restrooms to identity documents [1]. Here are the numbers, the rulings, and the map of a legal transformation in progress.

2020: the promise of Bostock

To understand the scope of what is happening, one must start with a ruling that seemed to have charted an opposite course. On June 15, 2020, the United States Supreme Court decided the case Bostock v. Clayton County with a 6-3 vote [2]. Justice Neil Gorsuch, appointed by Donald Trump, wrote the majority opinion establishing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects workers from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation [2].

The Court’s words left no room for ambiguity: “An employer who fires an individual merely for being transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex” [2]. For the first time in history, the highest federal judicial body explicitly stated that discriminating against a trans person amounts to sex-based discrimination.

The ruling consolidated three cases: that of Gerald Bostock, fired by Clayton County (Georgia) after joining a gay softball league; that of Donald Zarda, fired by Altitude Express for being gay; and that of Aimee Stephens, fired by R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes after disclosing her identity as a trans woman. Stephens did not live to see the ruling: she died in May 2020, a month before the decision.

Bostock established a federal principle. But the state legislative machinery was already moving in the opposite direction.

The wave: the numbers year by year

Here are the numbers. They come from the Trans Legislation Tracker, the database that monitors in real time every anti-trans bill introduced in American state legislatures [1].

2021: approximately 147 bills, of which 13-17 were passed and signed by governors. It was the beginning. Arkansas became the first state to ban gender-affirming care for minors [1]. The average legislator could still afford not to have an opinion.

2022: 174 bills, 26 passed [1]. The pace was accelerating. The dominant category was sports bans, but the first bathroom laws and healthcare restrictions began to appear.

2023: 604 bills, 87 passed [1]. The jump was enormous: bills quadrupled compared to two years earlier, laws actually enacted increased fivefold. The phenomenon was no longer limited to the Deep South: Utah, Montana, Idaho, and Indiana passed restrictive packages.

2024: 701 bills, 51 passed [1]. The number of bills continued to grow, but the approval rate decreased: many legislatures had already exhausted the most obvious measures. New fronts opened: legal definitions of sex, restrictions on the use of pronouns in schools, bans on drag performances in the presence of minors.

2025: 1,022 bills in 49 states and at the federal level, 54 passed [1]. For the first time, the threshold of one thousand bills in a single year was exceeded. Kansas passed a law combining bathroom bans with restrictions on updating identity documents.

2026 (as of February 9): 645 bills already filed, 3 passed [17]. The projected pace exceeded that of 2025. Among the first laws passed, New Hampshire amended its anti-discrimination legislation to explicitly allow the classification of people by biological sex in restrooms, locker rooms, sports, and institutional settings [17].

The cumulative total from 2021 to February 2026 exceeds 3,300 bills [1][17]. The main categories: sports, healthcare, restrooms, drag performances, pronouns, school curricula, legal definitions of sex.

Care denied: 27 states, 120,400 adolescents

The healthcare front is the one that produces the most direct consequences on people’s lives. As of 2025, 27 states have passed laws that ban or restrict access to gender-affirming care for minors: puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgical procedures [5][15].

According to the Williams Institute at UCLA, 120,400 trans adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17 — 40.1% of all trans youth in that age group — live in states where such care is banned [5]. These are boys and girls whose state of residence prevents them from accessing treatments recommended by every major American medical association, from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the Endocrine Society, from the American Medical Association to the American Psychological Association.

The ruling that changed everything on this front is called United States v. Skrmetti. On June 18, 2025, the Supreme Court decided with a vote of 6 to 3 that Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors (Senate Bill 1, passed in 2023) does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment [3]. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, applying the so-called “rational basis review” — the lowest standard of scrutiny, the one that grants the maximum margin of discretion to the legislature [3][7].

The Court’s logic: the ban does not discriminate on the basis of sex because it applies to all minors, regardless of the sex assigned at birth [3]. According to the majority, “age” and “medical use” do not constitute suspect classes requiring more rigorous scrutiny. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson signed the dissent.

The consequences were immediate. On August 12, 2025, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed its previous decision in the case Brandt v. Rutledge, which had blocked Arkansas’s ban (the first state to pass such a ban) [7]. Directly citing Skrmetti, the en banc court held that Arkansas’s Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act violates neither the Equal Protection Clause, nor due process, nor the First Amendment. Arkansas’s ban, blocked by courts for years, is now fully in effect.

After Skrmetti, bans in 25 out of 27 states are fully enforceable [7]. In some states, such as Oklahoma, Texas, and South Carolina, proposals to extend the ban up to age 26 have been discussed, targeting young adults as well.

Sports: 27 states, the Supreme Court decides in 2026

Twenty-seven states have passed laws banning trans girls and women from participating in women’s sports in schools [8]. Counting states that enforce bans through administrative regulations (Alaska and Virginia), the total rises to 29 [8]. According to the Williams Institute, approximately 117,400 trans adolescents between 13 and 17 live in one of these states [6].

The issue has reached the Supreme Court. On January 13, 2026, the Court heard oral arguments in two consolidated cases: West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox [4][16].

The West Virginia case concerns B.P.J., a trans girl who was 11 when her state passed the Save Women’s Sports Act in April 2021. B.P.J. wanted to run on her middle school’s cross country and track team, but the principal prevented her, citing the new law. The family sued, and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that West Virginia’s law violated Title IX, the federal statute prohibiting sex discrimination in government-funded educational programs.

The Idaho case (Little v. Hecox) raises analogous questions concerning the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act of 2020.

After nearly three and a half hours of oral arguments, the conservative majority appeared inclined to uphold the legitimacy of state bans [4]. The decision is expected in June 2026.

Restrooms: 20 states, from North Carolina to Texas

The public restroom issue was the first visible battlefield of this conflict, and remains one of the most politically charged.

The pioneering case is that of North Carolina and its House Bill 2 (HB2), passed in March 2016. The law required people to use restrooms corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificate in government buildings and public schools. The reaction was immediate and massive: boycotts by companies, cancellations of sporting and cultural events, withdrawal of investments. The Associated Press estimated the law would cost the state $3.76 billion over twelve years [13]. Among the documented losses: $2.66 billion from PayPal, which abandoned expansion of a center in Charlotte; half a billion from Deutsche Bank, which canceled investment plans in Cary; a quarter billion from CoStar, which relocated a research center to Virginia; $100 million from the NBA All-Star Game moved out of Charlotte [13].

The restroom section of HB2 was repealed in March 2017 with House Bill 142. But the precedent had been set.

In 2025 and 2026, the dynamic has reversed. Economic consequences no longer function as a deterrent. As of July 2025, 19 states had active laws restricting restroom access for trans people. Texas became the twentieth on September 22, 2025, when Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 8 (Texas Women’s Privacy Act), which bans trans people from using restrooms consistent with their gender identity in government buildings and schools [14]. Texas introduced the country’s most severe penalties: $25,000 for the first violation, $125,000 for each subsequent violation, calculated on a daily basis [14]. The law took effect on December 4, 2025. Attorney General Ken Paxton opened a dedicated hotline for reporting violations [14].

Trump 2.0: the executive order and the courts’ response

On January 20, 2025, the day of his inauguration for his second term, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14168, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” [11]. The order establishes that the federal government recognizes exclusively two sexes, defined as immutable and determined at conception [11][12].

The order’s five main provisions are as follows [11][12]. First: all federal agencies must replace the term “gender” with “sex” in every document and official policy. Second: federal identity documents — passports, visas, work documents — must reflect the sex assigned at birth; the “X” marker introduced in 2022 is eliminated. Third: all federal funding for gender-affirming care is cut. Fourth: sex-separated spaces under federal jurisdiction — including women’s prisons and shelters for victims of violence — must be assigned based on biological sex. Fifth: trans people in federal prisons cannot access facilities consistent with their gender identity.

In the hours following the signing, the administration removed LGBTQ+ resources from government websites [12].

The judicial response came quickly. On March 4, 2025, in the case PFLAG v. Trump, Judge Brendan A. Hurson of the federal court in Maryland issued a nationwide preliminary injunction preventing the government from revoking funding to hospitals and institutions that provide gender-affirming care to people under 19 [10]. The injunction applies to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and all sub-agencies of HHS [10]. The government has appealed to the Fourth Circuit, where proceedings are still ongoing.

Shield states: 14 states plus the District of Columbia

Not all states are moving in the same direction. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have passed so-called “shield laws” or “refuge laws” that actively protect access to gender-affirming care [9].

California was the first, with Senate Bill 107, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in September 2022 [18]. The law prohibits California law enforcement from participating in the arrest or extradition of a person based on a warrant issued by another state for having received gender-affirming care [18]. It also prohibits the enforcement of orders to remove minors from parental custody motivated by access to such care. In 2025, California strengthened these protections with SB 497, which prevents healthcare providers from complying with subpoenas requiring the disclosure of medical information related to gender-affirming care.

The other states with shield laws are: Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington [9]. Arizona and Delaware have similar protections through executive orders from their respective governors.

According to the Movement Advancement Project, approximately 38% of the US trans population lives in a state with shield laws [9].

The result is a country split in two. A trans person living in Minnesota has access to legal protections that do not exist a few hundred kilometers away, in Iowa or South Dakota. A trans adolescent in Tennessee cannot access puberty blockers but could do so by crossing the border into Illinois. Geography has become the determining factor in access to fundamental rights.

The picture that emerges

The data tell a precise story. In fewer than five years, the United States went from the Bostock ruling [2] — which affirmed federal protection of trans people from workplace discrimination — to a system in which the majority of states have passed at least one restrictive law targeting trans people. The Supreme Court, in its current composition with six conservative-appointed justices, has already upheld healthcare bans with Skrmetti [3] and appears poised to do the same with sports bans [4].

The numbers are these: 27 states with bans on care for minors [5][15], 27 with sports bans [8], 20 with restroom restrictions. Over 120,000 trans adolescents live in states where they cannot access care recommended by the medical community [5]. Over 3,300 bills filed in five years [1]. An executive order that redefines federal policy on sex and gender [11].

On the other side, 14 states and the District of Columbia have built a system of legal protections that attempts to stem the tide [9]. Federal courts have blocked some of the Trump administration’s most aggressive measures [10], but the injunctions are temporary and subject to appeal.

The Supreme Court decision on sports bans, expected in June 2026 [4], represents the next turning point. It is not only about sports: the ruling will define the limits of state power to classify people based on sex assigned at birth, with implications that extend well beyond the playing fields.

The data are public. The rulings are filed. The laws are in effect. The reader can draw their own conclusions.