More than 275 bills targeting LGBTQ rights flood state legislatures

State legislatures have introduced more than 275 bills targeting LGBTQ rights for 2024 sessions, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reported Tuesday, signaling an increased focus on LGBTQ rights among conservative legislators in the new year.

The mark follows more than 500 similar bills in 2023, the ACLU said. The legislation targets issues including gender-affirming care for young people and adults, the ability of students to choose their gender in schools, transgender student athletes and restrictions on LGBTQ speech.

“Transgender people across the country are enduring a historic and dangerous effort to control our bodies and our lives, fueled by extremist politics with the goal of erasing us from public life,” ACLU attorney Harper Seldin said.

“Taken together, these proposals are a blatant effort to deny transgender people the freedom to be ourselves at school, at work, and the support of the medical care many of us need to live,” he said. “We at the ACLU and our nationwide affiliate network stand ready to defend our freedoms and our families from this baseless assault.”

The Human Rights Campaign, a pro-LGBTQ advocacy group, declared a “national state of emergency” last June over the wave of anti-LGBTQ bills proposed in states. More than 80 anti-LGBTQ laws were enacted this past year, the ACLU said.

More than 200 of the 2024 bills are focused on education, by the ACLU’s count, including more than 30 targeting transgender athletes, 36 on school curriculums and 38 regarding the forced outing of LGBTQ students to their parents.

Nearly 120 included provisions limiting access to health care, mostly gender-affirming surgeries for minors. Some bills included multiple anti-LGBTQ issues.

Many of the laws passed in 2023 were challenged in court, and state and federal courts have struck down attempted bans on gender-affirming care in Arkansas, Indiana, Montana and Florida. Similar bans in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Texas and Georgia, however, were upheld in court.

More than a third of transgender children and adolescents in the U.S. live in a state that has banned gender-affirming health care, according to the Human Rights Campaign.