Trump's 'two sexes' order spurs state-level efforts to crack down on trans treatments for minors
Several states emboldened by President Donald Trump's executive orders are moving to introduce bills banning transgender medical care for minors, and one legal expert believes it's a "continuation" of the success other states have achieved in the last several years fighting against the Biden administration.
"You go back to 2020, when Idaho became the first state to pass a save women's sports law, and in 2021, Arkansas was the first state to protect kids from dangerous gender transition, drugs and surgeries," Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Matt Sharp told Fox News Digital in an interview. "And since that time, we've had over 25 states pass both of those laws, plus other measures to protect women's privacy and safety and schools or women's shelters or correctional facilities."
"So, what we are seeing is truly the continuation of incredible work by state legislatures and others to address the concerns of gender ideology and make sure that women and children in their states are not being harmed by it," he said.
So far this year, several states have introduced or considered legislation to ban transgender medical procedures for minors. More than two dozen states already have laws in place restricting such procedures.
Alabama recently passed a bill in the Senate aiming to legally define gender based on one's biological sex, in line with Trump's "two sexes" declaration. Georgia's state Senate also passed a bill this week that would cut state funding for transgender surgical treatments, extending to both minors and adults. The bill aims to block state funds for state employee and university health insurance plans, Medicaid, and the state's prison system.
Some states are still rebelling against Trump's orders. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, vetoed a bill this week that would have prohibited state funds from being used on gender transition treatments and procedures on minors and allow civil actions against healthcare providers conducting such treatments.
Despite Trump's executive orders, Democratic attorneys general from 15 states – California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin – issued a joint statement this month doubling down on their support for transgender procedures for minors.
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The executive orders, signed in late January, include a reinstatement of the ban on transgender troops in the military, a ban on federal funding for sex changes for minors and a directive requiring federal agencies to recognize only "two sexes," male and female, in official standard of conduct.
"What these executive orders represent is a 180-degree turn from that, rather than the federal government trying to push this dangerous ideology and being an adversary of states and their efforts to protect women and girls, you know, have an ally at the federal government," Sharp, who filed one of the first state cases against a Connecticut policy allowing men to compete in women's sports in 2020, said.
Sharp described Trump's executive orders as a "return to normalcy."
"What we saw starting a new Obama administration and continuing in the Biden administration, I think was trying to erase sex and replace it with the concept of gender identity," he said. "And I think Americans have seen that. They've seen the harm that's caused to countless young women, to young children, pushed to do irreparable damage to their bodies through these gender transition drugs and surgeries to even families who have had their rights violated by policies that were hiding information, lying to parents about a child who was experiencing distress over their sex and gender."
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While the Trump White House has made its stance on gender-related issues clear, the U.S. Supreme Court will determine a critical ruling this summer on whether the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which guarantees equal treatment under the law for individuals in similar circumstances, prevents states from banning medical providers from offering puberty blockers and hormone treatments to children seeking transgender surgical procedures.