The past five years have seen almost all US states debate or enact bills to curtail transgender people’s access to health care, their right to participate in youth sports and other rights. Amber Lusvardi and Kaitlin Kelly-Thompson examine the language of legislators and lobbyists who support these measures in debates, finding that they frequently use a narrative of “protecting girls”. This framing casts transgender people as a threat to safety and the social order and reaffirms patriarchal gender norms.

Legislation aiming to stifle the individual rights of transgender people has now been introduced in 49 of the 50 US states in the last five years. The number of bills introduced and adopted continues to climb each year, with 910 anti-transgender bills introduced in 2025 alone. State legislators – mostly Republicans – have come out in favor of bills that limit transgender people’s access to health care, public restrooms, the right to use preferred pronouns, and the right to participate in youth sports, among other issues. To advance this agenda, legislators have framed transgender people as a threat and cisgender girls as in need of protection.

The anti-transgender legislation that is now proliferating across state legislatures is emblematic of a turn in US politics toward enforcing a strict view of the gender binary and traditional gender roles, known as “gender essentialism”. This legislation asserts that “biology is destiny” and individuals’ gender identity must match their sex assigned at birth. Moreover, in committee hearings and floor debate, proponents of this legislation – both legislators and lobbyists – claim that the existence of transgender people in public life should be seen as a threat to safety and the social order.

The state of anti-transgender legislation

Anti-transgender legislation being introduced in state legislatures often falls into the following areas: the right of transgender youths to make decisions autonomously, the right to have access to gender affirming care, the right to exist in public spaces using one’s preferred gender identity, and the rights of schools to limit the recognition of non-binary and transgender people. One hotly debated topic is whether transgender youths should be able to participate in athletics on the team that matches their gender identity. So far in 2025, 112 bills have been introduced that ban transgender people from participating in K-12 or collegiate athletics. In 2024 and 2025, the most popular bills to be introduced were those involving transgender youths having the ability to choose their name or pronouns in school or for schools to provide information or support to transgender students. In the last 18 months alone, 465 bills were introduced across the states to restrict transgender individuals’ rights in education.  

The focus on transgender people in legislatures is out of step with the size of the transgender population in the United States. Fewer than one percent of Americans identify as transgender. Despite this, transgender people receive a high level of scrutiny, even in less professionalized state legislatures that have fewer days in session, smaller staffs, and less resources. Yet, state legislatures that rank low in professionalization – such as West Virginia, Kentucky, and Idaho – still have an active agenda of anti-transgender legislation. For example, West Virginia’s legislature introduced 35 anti-transgender bills in the space of six months.  

Youth sports and “protecting girls”

Legislators and lobbyists are using the narrative of “protecting girls” in debates to argue that the rights of transgender people to exist in certain public spaces or to make autonomous decisions should be restricted. Within this framing, transgender girls are threatening to cisgender girls, supportive parents of transgender children are threats to their children, and transgender boys are threats to themselves. Central to these arguments is an understanding of gender as biologically determined, and a need to regulate who can identify as a woman or girl.

In legislative debate on transgender girls’ access to interscholastic sports, transgender girls are constructed as adult men. For example, in 2021, Arkansas State Senator Missy Irvin (R) argued that the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act SB 354 was necessary because girls “had their dreams shattered because a biological male decided to identify as a girl and stole any chance they had to reach their goals.” In the discussion of SB 354, Irvin referred to transgender girls with the adult term “biological men,” but cisgender girls with the adolescent terms of “girls” or “young girls.”

We see this pattern repeated in other committee hearings among both Republican legislators and lobbyists supporting bills that limit transgender individuals’ access to athletics. In 2021, another transgender sports ban in Arizona – SB 1165 – was described by sponsor State Senator Nancy Barto (R) as an effort to prevent girls from being forced to compete against men in sports. These bills and debates focus solely on the possibility of transgender girls participating in girls’ sports and not transgender boys playing in boys’ sports, which reinforces the theme that cisgender girls require protection.

“Students Protest Anti-Trans Law” (CC BY 2.0) by Phil Roeder

Legislators argue gender affirming care is dangerous

Another area of contentious debate in state legislatures is whether transgender individuals, particularly minors, should have access to gender affirming care. The argument that minors should not have access to gender affirming care was made in Arizona and Arkansas legislatures, where legislators argued that this form of health care is a threat to young people’s overall health. Consistently, Republican legislators and conservative lobbyists in these states claim that gender-affirming care is untested, and uncertain, and thus is too risky.  

Parents that advocate for gender-affirming care are constructed by legislators as endangering their own children. In a 2022 Arizona State Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing on a bill banning gender affirming care, legislators questioned whether parents could be coercing children to change their gender identity and cast doubt on parental testimony. Here, the legislators argue that they are responsible for protecting children from potentially abusive parenting choices.

Children assigned female at birth are constructed as particularly vulnerable to the threat of receiving gender affirming care. In an Arizona Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing on a bill banning gender transition for minors, a lobbyist read testimony from adolescent psychologist Dr. Rodger Hiatt Jr. describing an “alarming trend” of increasing numbers of “biological females” seeking gender affirming care. In the House Judicial Committee Hearing on the same bill, Chairman Rep. Walter Blackman (R) interrupted the testimony of a medical professional to describe how his own teenage daughter can be confused and indecisive. Blackman said that out of his five children, his 13-year-old daughter “changes her mind as much as I change my shoes.” He uses this analogy as evidence of the inherent indecisiveness of girls and their need for protection from precarious decisions, such as transitioning. In this view, a stereotypical teenage girl puts no more effort into understanding their gender identity than they do in getting dressed.

Legislative debates framed around protecting the cisgendered may be sign of things to come

In analyzing legislative debate around anti-transgender legislation, we find the approach to limiting transgender individuals’ access to public life and healthcare is framed in terms of supporting and protecting the majority group – cisgender individuals – and specifically cisgender girls. Legislators and lobbyists supporting anti-transgender legislation have used paternal frames that center on gender essentialism. Looking to the future, we see these arguments as the starting position for a larger political agenda that uses public policy to reinforce patriarchal norms around the gender binary.

• This article is based on the paper, “Transgender Bodies are the Battleground: Backlash, Threat, and the Future of Queer Rights in the United States” in
• PS: Political Science & Politics. 
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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.