Fact check: Are there really more than 400 ‘anti-trans’ bills?

Transgender-related legislation is a subject of controversy in statehouses across the US. Some Democratic lawmakers and activists claim that there has been an alarming surge of proposals that aim to discriminate against transgender people. The number of bills cited in this context is often very high, fueling a sense of urgency in advancing transgender rights.

However, upon closer inspection, many of the bills labelled as “anti-trans” by some organizations might not actually target transgender people or their rights, raising some concerns about the accuracy of the statistics used in political debates on this topic.

For instance, some bills could be considered helpful to the transgender community, like the bill introduced by an Oregon Republican lawmaker that would allow transgender girls to participate in sports and remove the sex-specific designations for programs wishing to include transgender athletes. Other bills simply do not rise to the level of attempt “to obstruct trans people from receiving fundamental healthcare, education, legal acknowledgement, and the right to publicly exist,” as some statistics claim.

Parental notification laws are among the bills characterized as “anti-trans” that would merely stop schools from hiding information about their child’s gender status from parents, who could ultimately support the treatment their child is requesting. Many bills also seek to protect parental rights, ensure athletic fairness, or tackle routine funding questions.

While some of the bills may take a harsher approach, like criminalizing healthcare professionals from providing gender transition surgery to minors, the credibility of the claim that there are over 400 anti-trans bills being proposed when many of them address other issues than transgender rights is debatable.