The bills continue to limit gender-affirming health care for minors, while a slate of newer bills target drag performers.
\nMore than 100 bills targeting LGBTQ rights and queer life\u00a0\u2014\u00a0from transgender health care to drag shows \u2014\u00a0have been filed in 22 states for 2023 so far, leading advocates to expect this year will set a new record for anti-LGBTQ legislation.
\nSo far, Texas has taken the lead with\u00a036 such bills, according to Equality Texas, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy group. Missouri is next with 26, then North Dakota with eight and Oklahoma with six.
\nThe majority of these approximately 120 bills focus on transgender young people, continuing a trend that began about two years ago.
\nIn the past three years,\u00a018 states have banned\u00a0transgender student athletes from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity rather than the sex they were assigned at birth, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Four states \u2014 Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee and Arizona \u2014 have enacted restrictions on gender-affirming medical care for minors, though federal judges have blocked them from taking effect in Arkansas and Alabama.
\nThis year lawmakers in at least three states have introduced bills to restrict transgender girls and women from playing on female sports teams, and lawmakers in at least 11 states have proposed bills that would restrict gender-affirming health care for minors.
\nFor the third year in a row, efforts to restrict LGBTQ rights and queer life have been escalating, according to Chase Strangio, the deputy director of the American Civil Liberty Union\u2019s LGBT and HIV Project. Strangio, one of the attorneys who is representing transgender young people and their parents in their lawsuit against Arkansas\u2019 prohibition on gender-affirming medical care, said he expected the number of anti-LGBTQ bills filed this year to outpace those filed last year, when more than 340 such bills made it to state legislatures, according to an estimate from the Human Rights Campaign.
\nHe said he\u2019s most worried about more states restricting access to gender-affirming care and, if the makeup of Congress becomes more conservative in 2024, a potential federal ban.<\/p>\n