Arizona GOP wages legislative war on transgender existence

Yahoo

26-03-2025

Sen. John Kavanagh in October 2024. Photo by Gage Skidmore | Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
Republicans in the Arizona Legislature have sponsored and supported several pieces of legislation this year that focus on regulating the experiences of transgender people, who make up around 1% of the state's population.
That's in addition to attacks on transgender people from President Donald Trump, who has issued multiple executive orders aimed at erasing them from public life.
On Tuesday, the House Regulatory Oversight Committee approved along party lines two repeat proposals from Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, related to preferred name and pronoun use and who can use certain bathrooms and locker rooms in K-12 public schools.
Over the past decade, Kavanagh has repeatedly pushed to keep trans people out of public facilities like bathrooms that align with their gender identity. In recent years, he's focused on attempts to dismantle inclusive policies at public schools.
Kavanagh's Senate Bill 1002 would ban teachers from referring to a student by a name or pronoun that differs from their given name or biological sex without first obtaining written permission from a parent. But even with parental permission, the bill would allow school employees to disregard a student's identity without consequences if they have a 'religious or moral' objection.
Before voting against the bill, Tucson Democrat Consuelo Hernandez said that she was tired of seeing the same bill recycled year after year. She added that she was raised to treat people with respect, and that includes using whichever pronouns the person she's addressing requests.
'It is very disappointing that we're not working on issues that are actually affecting Arizonans and we just go after trans kids and it's just very exhausting and I'm sorry for those who have to hear this,' Hernandez said.
Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, made light of Hernandez's remarks, quipping that he thought Democrats liked recycling.
Another of Kavanagh's bills, Senate Bill 1003, would prohibit trans students from using locker rooms and bathrooms that don't match their biological sex. Schools that don't comply could be subject to civil suits for compensation for any 'psychological, emotional and physical harm suffered' by other students who encounter trans classmates in any of those locations. It would also ban trans students from staying in hotel rooms on school trips with classmates or teammates of the opposite biological sex.
Kavanagh told the committee members on Tuesday that his proposal would balance cisgender students' desire for privacy with trans students' discomfort using facilities that don't align with their gender identity. He claimed it does so by allowing trans students to request other accommodations, such as the use of single-occupancy or staff bathrooms.
Paul Bixler, a transgender woman and advocate, told the committee that this policy was likely to violate the privacy of trans students by 'outing' them to their peers when the rest of the students notice that they always use single-occupancy or staff bathrooms.
Bixler said that Kavangh's proposal would create an 'atmosphere of exclusion, alienation and disenfranchisement.'
Kolodin, a cisgender man, said that he didn't understand how forcing trans students to use separate bathrooms was a privacy issue, and that he personally felt a greater sense of privacy when using a single-occupancy bathroom.
Both of Kavanagh's bills already passed through the Senate in February with only Republicans in support. Last year, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed two nearly identical bills that Kavanagh sponsored.
But those are far from the only proposed pieces of legislation aimed at transgender people that are moving through the Arizona Legislature.
On Feb. 12, by a vote of 32-27, Republicans in the House of Representatives approved House Bill 2062, which would enshrine a narrow definition of biological sex into state law based on a person's physical reproductive characteristics. Critics of the bill, sponsored by anti-trans advocate Rep. Lisa Fink, R-Glendale, said it was an attempt to scrub transgender people from existence.
That bill was approved along party lines by the Senate's Government and Rules committees earlier this month and will next head for a vote by the full chamber.
On Feb. 19, Republicans in the House voted to approve House Bill 2438, which would ban transgender people who were born in Arizona from amending their birth certificates to reflect their gender identity.
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Rachel Keshel, a Tucson Republican and member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, claimed that its purpose was only to bring the state's birth certificate law in line with the U.S. Constitution and to protect 'the integrity and accuracy of vital records.'
Democrats argued that it was simply another attack on transgender people who just want to live their lives in peace. Within the past week, HB2438 was approved along party lines by the Senate Health and Human Services and Rules committees and will next be headed for a vote from the full chamber.
These efforts from the majority party in both chambers of the Arizona Legislature, alongside Trump's executive orders that banned transgender people from serving in the military and prohibit transgender girls and women from playing on girls school sports teams, are examples of increasing hostility from Republicans toward the trans community over the past several years.
In February, Keshel said that her HB2438 aligned with Trump's first anti-trans executive order, which sought to erase transgender and nonbinary identities in the eyes of the federal government.
The Republicans' anti-trans bills are likely to pass through the Republican-controlled House and Senate, but will almost certainly meet their end via a veto from Hobbs.
Hobbs has promised to block any discriminatory legislation aimed at the LGBTQ community, and has made good on that promise, vetoing multiple anti-trans bills annually since she took office in 2023.
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