In Summer 2022, Lawyers for Good Government’s (L4GG) partnered with the Protect Trans Health coalition to do legal research on access to transgender healthcare across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, to assist the coalition in its effort to support driving public comments to support a proposed federal rule, supporting access to healthcare.

L4GG wrote the following report in partnership with the Trans Formations Project. Together, our research finds that:

Transgender, non-binary, intersex, and two-spirit people* — and especially transgender youth — face vicious, highly politicized, rapidly escalating and cunningly strategic attacks on their right to exist that fly in the face of federal and international law.
Seven states have or are actively considering laws and policies that explicitly ban best-practice medical care for transgender youth: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.
Another ten states lack nondiscrimination protections for transgender people and have introduced bills restricting or banning transgender health care: Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia.
Though the majority of bills failed, these states saw over 300 anti-LGBTQ bills proposed last session, with the vast majority of them targeting the basic rights of transgender youth, such as access to healthcare, public accommodations, and education.
Members of Congress have proposed a federal bill that would make providing best practice gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors into a felony nationwide.
Despite this, transgender people’s rights are protected under federal and international law. States are breaking these laws in their discriminatory treatment of transgender residents and visitors. Some states, like California, are pushing back by affirmatively welcoming transgender families with “trans refuge” laws.
People are being denied basic civil liberties by absurd and often contradictory state laws. For example, Alabama law requires trans people to undergo genital surgery for a driver’s license but then outlaws best-practice gender affirming health care for anyone under 19, functionally making it impossible for trans teens to drive.
Lifesaving, best-practice health care for youth is being withheld
Hospitals are having funds held hostage: South Carolina and Oklahoma have passed laws withholding crucial hospital funding if their administrations do not cease providing gender-affirming care to youth.
Boards of medicine are being weaponized: on November 4, 2022, the Florida Board of Medicine voted to ban affirming care for trans minors, in the first such action of its kind.
Families are terrified as the wave of anti-trans policies sweeps across the nation, unsure where they can move and keep their loved ones safe.

Equitable access to safe, affirming and scientifically-validated medical care is a backbone to a just, democratic society. No court or legislature should step in between a patient and their doctor. Not for reproductive healthcare. Not for transgender healthcare. Not for any healthcare.

It is time for every state to step up and take action to protect trans youth.

You can read the full November 2022 report by clicking the link button below:

Refugees in Our Own Land