GOP-led states are emboldened to keep rolling back trans rights. Democrats struggle with a response

[January 22, 2025]  By ANDREW DeMILLO, JOHN HANNA and NADIA LATHAN

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republicans and Democrats in Kansas agree that concerns about the economy drove voters to support President Donald Trump by a 16% margin.

They also know that ads from Trump and others targeting transgender rights resonated with voters. So while Kansas Republicans say property tax cuts are their top priority, they also are pushing to ban gender-affirming care for young people, including puberty blockers, hormones and, even though they are rare for minors, surgeries. They say that, too, resonates strongly with voters.

“It carries so much more emotional weight,” said Republican state Rep. Ron Bryce, a doctor from southeastern Kansas. “We’re talking about children and our future.”

As lawmakers have gone into session in many states, Republicans are broadly emboldened by GOP electoral successes to continue pushing state-level bills to curtail transgender rights.

As was the case in 2023 and 2024, dozens of bills are pending in mostly red-state legislatures aimed at issues such as which bathroom transgender people can use in public buildings, whether transgender people can use their gender identity on their driver's licenses and whether transgender girls can play on girls sports teams. In Texas alone, Republicans have filed more than 30 measures.

Democrats are reckoning with voter backlash while not abandoning what they see as a civil rights issue.

Kansas state Rep. John Carmichael, a Wichita Democrat, said it’s hard to conclude that Kansas voters favor transgender rights after Republicans picked up three state House seats and two state Senate seats.

Republicans in the state think they’ll be able to ban gender-affirming care for young people this year after previously failing because the added Republican members will allow them to override a veto from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

“Transgender people are going to be facing discrimination at the national level for four years," Carmichael said Tuesday. “I’m sure that some of my colleagues in the Kansas Legislature will try to find a way to one-up even what Donald Trump is doing.”

Trump's first actions in office

Trump, who made anti-transgender themes central to his campaign, signed executive orders on his first day in office Monday declaring that the federal government would recognize only two sexes: male and female.

Federal prisons and shelters for migrants and rape survivors will be segregated by sex as defined by the order, and federal taxpayer money will not be able to be used to fund “transition services,” which would appear to cover people incarcerated in federal prisons.

In the U.S., about 300,000 youths ages 13 to 17, or 1.4%, are transgender, according to estimates by the Williams Institute, an LGBTQ+ research center at the UCLA School of Law. Among adults, the figure is 0.5%, for 1.3 million transgender Americans who are 18 or older.

At the state level, legislators anticipate a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that bans on gender-affirming care are constitutional. The court heard arguments in December on a Tennessee law that prohibits gender-affirming care for minors. The justices appeared likely to uphold the law, though a ruling isn’t expected until the summer.

About half of voters in the 2024 election said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far, while about 2 in 10 said it’s been about right, and a similar share said it hasn’t gone far enough, according to AP VoteCast.

Voters were split on at least one specific proposal. AP VoteCast found that slightly more than half of voters opposed laws that ban gender-affirming medical treatment, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for transgender minors, while a little under half were in favor.

A small flag promoting LGBTQ+ rights sits on the desk of state Rep. Jo Ella Hoye, D-Lenexa, in the House chamber as Republicans prepare to push for a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

Gender-affirming care for young people

At least 26 states have banned or restricted gender-affirming care for people under 18.

Harleigh Walker, a transgender 17-year-old high school senior in Alabama where the care is banned, said it’s astounding that states are considering legislation that harms constituents like her. She said she’s likely to leave the South for college, and her family is also considering moving.

“We’re not hurting anyone,” Walker said in a telephone interview. “Our existence and our right to healthcare, bathroom use, et cetera, it’s not hurting anyone.”

Every major U.S. medical group, including the American Medical Association, has opposed the bans and said gender-affirming treatments can be medically necessary and are supported by evidence. Doctors, parents and young people have said such care reduces depression and suicidal thoughts in transgender youths.

Conservatives nonetheless often describe the care as potentially harmful. Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins said lawmakers are trying to protect young people.

“Children under the age of 18 are not equipped with the knowledge or maturity to make a decision that permanently affects the rest of their lives,” he said in a newsletter earlier this month.

LGBTQ+ rights advocates fear the next step is restrictions on care for adults. Florida is the only state that has done that, through there have been proposals in at least two other states.

Mo Jenkins, a 25-year-old transgender woman who ran unsuccessfully for a Texas House seat in Houston last year, described the possibility as terrifying. Her state banned gender-affirming care for minors in 2023.

“It was never going to stop with children,” she said.

Democrats say they'll defend civil rights

The discussions among Democrats in red or swing states reflect the memory of Trump ads that blasted their presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, as being “for they/them” while “President Trump is for you.”

Democratic Kansas state Sen. Cindy Holscher focused her reelection campaign in affluent Kansas City suburbs on education and taxes, capturing 61% of the vote.

“Democrats have a tendency to want to lean on those social issues, but they aren’t necessarily winning issues,” she said.

Holscher, Carmichael and other Democrats say they will still oppose measures restricting transgender rights.

“Civil rights are in the DNA of Democrats,” said Joan Wagnon, a former Kansas Democratic Party chair, state lawmaker and Topeka mayor.

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DeMillo reported from Little Rock, Arkansas, and Lathan reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writer Kimberly Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.

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