These 5 States Are Doing the Most to Target LGBTQ People
More anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in 2023 than any other year in the history of the United States. Although estimates of just how many vary widely, the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), an independent non-profit think tank, provided data to Rolling Stone projecting that more than 700 bills have been put forward in 2023 that seek to strip rights and protections from the LGBTQ community. More than 75 of those bills ultimately passed, including limitations on trans youth athletes who wish to compete in school sports, and the first-ever laws restricting public performances of drag.
The vast majority of bills passed in the 2023 legislative session target trans youth: 15 states have enacted restrictions on gender-affirming medical care for trans minors under the age of 18, including Georgia, Missouri, Nebraska, and West Virginia. The focus on trans children marks a drastic change in subject matter from just eight years ago, back when the number of bills aimed at the LGBTQ community first began to rise. At the time, 177 anti-LGBTQ bills were put forward and 15 ultimately became law, according to MAP’s research. At the time, most of these statutes were “religious freedom” laws introduced in response to same-sex couples fighting for their right to marry.
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Logan Casey, a senior policy researcher for MAP, says the shift in anti-LGBTQ laws over the past decade is a reflection of changing electoral politics, but that they also represent a movement decades in making. “There’s an extremely well-funded, powerful, and coordinated group of far-right extremists and lobbyists that have been working together for years to push an agenda of anti-LGBTQ policy across the country,” he tells Rolling Stone. “What we see them doing is trial and error of seeing what sticks with the public by seeing what messaging works. Is it going to be a bathroom ban? Is it going to be a sports ban? Is it going to be religious exemptions?”
Amid the growth in anti-equality legislation over the past five years, some states have proven themselves to be leaders in targeting LGBTQ Americans for discrimination. To determine which states have enacted the largest number of anti-LGBTQ laws, Rolling Stone reviewed data provided by MAP and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) ranking the number of policies passed by state since 2015. HRC and MAP have different criteria for evaluating what legislation they consider to be explicitly anti-LGBTQ; therefore, each group’s count is included separately. Using that data — as well as looking at the speed and ferocity at which laws were introduced — we ranked the states that are most viciously targeting their LGBTQ communities.
5. Montana
HRC: 11
MAP: 8
Montana made headlines this year when GOP lawmakers voted to censure state Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D), the state’s only openly trans politician, for denouncing a bill that would restrict gender-affirming medical care to trans minors. After the move resulted in impassioned protests on the steps of the Montana State Capitol building, Zephyr’s Republican colleagues voted to ban her from the legislature for the remainder of the term. After a weeks-long standoff, Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) signed the legislation into law in April anyway, making Montana one of 20 states to restrict treatments like puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, or surgery to trans youth, the latter of which is only recommended in rare cases.
The gender-affirming care ban, however, was among many anti-LGBTQ laws passed in Montana over the past few years. In May 2021, Gianforte signed three bills targeting the LGBTQ community all within the same week: a trans sports ban applying to both K-12 and collegiate athletics; a bill preventing the overwhelming majority of trans people from correcting their birth certificates; and legislation allowing parents to opt their students out of LGBTQ inclusive curriculum. And those weren’t even the first anti-LGBTQ laws Gianforte approved that year: He also rubber-stamped a bill allowing people of faith to ignore government policies if the regulations conflict with their religious beliefs, which critics claimed would be used as justification for refusing goods and services to the LGBTQ community. That law was further strengthened this May, when Gianforte signed a bill allowing medical providers to deny care based upon “ethical, moral, or religious beliefs or principles.”
Montana continued upping the ante throughout 2023, proposing at least 10 bills targeting the LGBTQ community, according to Track Trans Legislation, an independent research project monitoring the recent rise in anti-LGBTQ state-level bills. At least four of those bills ultimately passed. In addition to the trans youth medical care ban and religious refusal bill, Montana passed a law this April that made the state just the second in U.S. history — after Tennessee — to restrict public drag performances; another enacted the following month defined “sex” as exclusively male or female in portions of the state code. Gianforte’s own non-binary child, David, reportedly urged him not to sign the anti-LGBTQ bills into law, but the governor did so nonetheless.
4. Florida
HRC: 11
MAP: 8
Florida has dominated the headlines over the past few years when it comes to anti-LGBTQ policy, and 2023 was no exception. In May, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed the country’s most extreme law targeting trans public restroom use, which makes it a misdemeanor offense for trans people to use gender-congruent restrooms in schools, correctional facilities, and any building owned by the state. Classified as criminal trespassing, such an action could result in a stay of up to 60 days in jail. DeSantis authorized the new law on the same day that he signed bills that make it a felony for doctors to prescribe gender-affirming care to trans minors and expand the state’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law. The two-year-old statute initially banned discussions of LGBTQ identities in K-3 classrooms, but the 2023 amendments extended the “Don’t Say Gay” embargo until the end of the eighth grade. The new restrictions, though, were already moot before they were even signed: In April of this year, the Florida Board of Education voted to bar virtually any mention of the LGBTQ community in elementary, middle, and high school curricula.
The recent wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation feels alien to civil rights advocates who have been working in Florida for decades. Joe Saunders, who served for two years in the state legislature before joining Equality Florida as its senior political director, says Florida was once “often thought of as the hope of the South.” In 2017, a record 15 Republican lawmakers signed onto a bill that would enshrine into law protections for LGBTQ Floridians in areas like housing, employment, and areas of public accommodation, such as the right to be served at a restaurant. “It feels like a rubber band has been released, and we are slingshotting into a different version of Florida than we’ve ever been,” Saunders tells Rolling Stone. “It is jarring to come out of this last session where there were 22 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation that were filed. That is the most we’ve ever had on record. People are shocked. They’re afraid, and they’re very, very angry.”
As DeSantis gears up for a 2024 presidential campaign, LGBTQ Floridians worry that attacks on equality may continue proliferating next legislative session. The governor has hinted at further actions to punish Disney for its criticism of the “Don’t Say Gay” law as the company sues DeSantis’ administration in court for retaliation. The governor installed an oversight board to monitor Disney World’s special district after stripping its self-governing status and has floated the possibility of building a prison near the Orlando theme park to scare off potential visitors. Meanwhile, Florida’s regulations on trans youth health care have also made it extremely difficult for adults to transition: The new law bans gender-affirming treatments from being prescribed through telehealth — for trans people of all ages — and prohibits nurse practitioners from administering transition care. What’s more, it requires trans patients to sign an informed consent form before they can be prescribed treatment, a form that has yet to be created by state medical authorities.
3. North Dakota
HRC: 11
MAP: 10
North Dakota led the nation this year in the number of new laws targeting the LGBTQ community — which is, in part, due to the fact that the state didn’t have many anti-LGBTQ laws on the books before 2023. Cody Schuler, advocacy manager for the ACLU of North Dakota, admits that civil rights groups were “blindsided by the sheer number and the wide range” of anti-LGBTQ bills during the legislative session. “It’s like we’re playing catch up,” he tells Rolling Stone. “For years, there haven’t necessarily been any targeted bills that have come from lawmakers.”
North Dakota LGBTQ advocates expected the 2023 legislative session to focus on reproductive rights in the wake of a legal injunction against the state’s 2018 abortion trigger law, which made it a felony to terminate a pregnancy after Roe v. Wade’s repeal by the Supreme Court. Although Gov. Doug Burgum (R) did sign a near-total abortion ban this April, the session agenda largely focused on the LGBTQ community instead. Of the 10 anti-LGBTQ bills that crossed his desk in 2023, Burgum would sign all but one: a bill requiring teachers to call trans students by the name and pronoun they were assigned at birth. (Burgum would, however, approve a watered-down version of the same proposal the following month, which instead allowed teachers to misgender trans students without repercussions.) The GOP also passed a series of laws making it more difficult for trans people to update their birth certificates; banning trans people from using gender-congruent restrooms in colleges and prisons; requiring teachers to out trans students to their parents; and making it a felony to provide gender-affirming medical treatments to trans minors.
One of the reasons that advocates were caught off guard, Schuler says, is that Burgum had previously been an ally on some LGBTQ issues. While running for governor in 2016, he expressed support for LGBTQ-inclusive non-discrimination law and vetoed a bill restricting sports participation for trans students in 2021. But amid his own presidential bid, Burgum reversed course this year, signing legislation to prevent trans athletes from competing in accordance with their gender at both the K-12 and collegiate levels. “It’s incredibly overwhelming,” Schuler says. “The state that I grew up in was a state that was very respectful of people who were different: Your business is your business, my business is my business. I don’t remember ever anything being quite this toxic.”
2. Arkansas
HRC: 13
MAP: 9
Arkansas has proven itself to be an early adopter of anti-LGBTQ legislation: In May 2021, the Yellowhammer State became the first in the country to restrict gender-affirming medical treatments for trans youth patients. Although Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) initially vetoed the legislation, Republican lawmakers swiftly overturned his decision. Within just 24 hours, the Arkansas Legislature voted to override his veto by a margin of 71-24 in the state House and 25-8 in the Senate. But despite Hutchinson’s concerns that legislation targeting trans youth health care in Arkansas represented “vast government overreach,” the law was actually the third anti-LGBTQ statute to be enacted that year. Hutchinson — who is also running for president in 2024 — signed a bill allowing health care workers to refuse treatment to LGBTQ patients on the basis of religion and a bill banning trans girls from competing in women’s athletics in both K-12 and college sports. The sports bill made Arkansas just the second-ever state to enact an anti-trans athletics ban after Idaho.
Arkansas hasn’t slowed down in the years since: This year alone, the state enacted at least four anti-LGBTQ laws, including its second targeting trans youth medical care. A bill signed by the state’s current GOP governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in February makes it easier for patients to sue their providers if they later become dissatisfied with gender-affirming medical treatments they received.(This is despite the fact that a 2021 literature review of 21 studies found that rates of regret are extremely low: Just one percent of respondents expressed remorse regarding their transition, and these feelings were often due to external factors like anti-trans discrimination.) In 2023, Sanders also signed a “Don’t Say Gay” bill banning LGBTQ education through the fifth grade and a bill barring trans students from using the correct bathrooms in schools. Although Arkansas passed its own drag ban, the legislation was gutted to remove its most controversial elements following backlash. It no longer singles out drag performers specifically.
But just as Arkansas has been a forerunner in anti-LGBTQ policy, it’s also played an instrumental role in the movement to challenge these laws. In May 2021, the ACLU sued Arkansas on behalf of four trans teenagers who were no longer able to receive gender-affirming treatments following the enactment of the state’s medical care ban, and they were joined in the suit by a doctor who could no longer treat his trans youth patients. Two months later, Judge James M. Moody, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas allowed a temporary injunction against the law, and Moody would strike it down entirely in June of this year. Those two decisions made Arkansas the first state to have its trans medical care ban blocked in court and the first to see it fully overturned.
1. Tennessee
HRC: 18
MAP: 13
Tennessee doesn’t just have the largest number of anti-LGBTQ policies of any state in the country. It leads on this count by a considerable margin: HRC’s tally puts Tennessee five laws ahead of Arkansas. The reason for that wide gap is that Tennessee has distinguished itself as an “innovator” in anti-LGBTQ policy, according to HRC state legislative director Cathryn Oakley. “For every kind of bad bill that has passed over the last several years, Tennessee has an example,” Oakley tells Rolling Stone. “They try things early. Sometimes they don’t pass them right away, but they’ve got a little bit of everything. They’re a lab for this stuff.” Tennessee, for instance, has four laws limiting trans youth sports participation, by far the most of any state in the country.
Among the factors that make Tennessee a breeding ground for anti-LGBTQ proposals are its political makeup: Like each of the states on this list, the Volunteer State is both heavily gerrymandered and boasts a Republican trifecta, meaning that the GOP controls both houses of the legislature and the governor’s mansion. And like Arkansas, Tennessee also got a head start in racking up anti-LGBTQ laws. Tennessee passed a law in 2016 allowing therapists to deny treatment to patients on religious grounds and another the following year enshrining the “natural and ordinary meaning” of words like mother and father. By 2021, Tennessee would pass what was at the time the largest number of anti-LGBTQ laws enacted in a single year: five. That number included bills allowing parents to opt students out of LGBTQ inclusive lessons in school, banning trans students from using school facilities that match their identities, and forcing businesses to hang signs warning the public if they allow trans people to use the restroom of their choice. In 2023 alone, Tennessee’s slate of anti-LGBTQ legislation includes its controversial drag ban — which was recently blocked by a Trump-appointed federal judge — and a gender-affirming care ban for trans youth.
Advocates say that the pile up of anti-LGBTQ bills over the years has had a deleterious impact on Tennessee’s queer community. “They’re louder and they’re more insulting each legislative session,” Phil Cobucci, founder and executive director of Inclusion Tennessee, tells Rolling Stone. “After this year, particularly, we have members of our community who are ready to leave. They don’t feel safe. We have members of our community who don’t believe that they are wanted, and their mental health has suffered considerably, but at the same time, there’s also an eloquent rage that is bubbling.”
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