Tracking the Trump Administration's Anti-Transgender Policies: A Resource for Legal Professionals and Families. Since President Trump's return, his administration has consistently enacted policies targeting transgender rights, using executive orders and subtly embedding anti-trans language in various federal agency policies. This relentless barrage of changes, impacting both federal and state laws, necessitates a centralized resource. This crucial database helps legal professionals, healthcare providers, and families understand and navigate the complex landscape of transgender rights, providing critical legal tools to combat these policies
Tracking the complex web of federal and state laws impacting transgender rights is a monumental task. Federal policy changes under the current administration, often impacting state-level legislation, create significant challenges for legal professionals, healthcare providers, and families. This complexity necessitates readily accessible resources to understand and navigate these evolving legal landscapes
Navigating the complex web of anti-transgender policies enacted by the Trump administration is crucial. Khadijah Silver, a civil rights attorney at Lawyers for Good Government, highlights the dangers of this confusing landscape. To combat this, she created the Policy Resource Hub for Transgender Rights, a comprehensive online database tracking state and federal policies impacting transgender rights, including access to gender-affirming care, education, and public accommodations. This vital resource empowers attorneys, healthcare providers, and families of transgender youth to understand their rights and fight back against discriminatory legislation
Navigating the complex landscape of transgender rights requires a clear understanding of constantly evolving federal and state policies. Khadijah Silver, a civil rights attorney, created the Policy Resource Hub for Transgender Rights to empower attorneys, healthcare providers, and families of transgender youth. This comprehensive online database tracks and analyzes state and federal policies impacting access to gender-affirming care, education, public accommodations, and LGBTQ+ constitutional protections across all 50 states and six territories. Providing crucial legal tools and resources, the Hub helps fight back against discriminatory policies and ensures transgender individuals and their families know their rights
Track Transgender Rights: A Comprehensive 50-State Database. This new online resource analyzes state policies impacting LGBTQ+ rights, including access to gender-affirming care, education, public accommodations, and constitutional protections. Provides crucial information for legal professionals, healthcare providers, and families across all 50 states and six territories
States Defy Court Orders to Enforce Anti-Trans Policies: A new resource tracks how states are implementing Trump-era executive orders targeting transgender rights, often conflicting with state laws and court decisions. This circumvention is highlighted by examples like Utah's High School Activities Association, which excluded transgender girls from sports citing a federal executive order despite a prior state court ruling
Utah's High School Activities Association (UHSAA) banned transgender girls from sports, citing a Trump executive order barring federally funded K-12 schools from allowing transgender athletes. This action contradicts a 2022 Utah district court ruling blocking a state law with the same effect. Despite arguments that UHSAA violated court orders, a judge refused to hold them in contempt, prioritizing the presidential mandate
Executive orders, unlike laws, are only binding on the executive branch of government
Unprecedented Legal Challenges to Transgender Rights: A Civil Rights Attorney Sounds the Alarm. A federal judge's unprecedented deference to a presidential executive order, overriding a state court decision, highlights the escalating legal battle over transgender rights. This unprecedented move underscores the complex and rapidly evolving landscape of state and federal policies impacting transgender individuals, their families, and healthcare providers
A network of 500+ pro bono attorneys from diverse law firms meticulously track and analyze policy changes impacting transgender rights, powering Lawyers for Good Government's comprehensive Policy Resource Hub. This vital resource ensures up-to-date legal information for attorneys, healthcare providers, and families navigating complex federal and state laws concerning gender-affirming care, education, and LGBTQ+ rights
Protect transgender rights: A new Policy Resource Hub empowers attorneys to contribute expertise anonymously, mitigating the chilling effect of potential legal repercussions from the Trump administration's targeting of pro bono work challenging anti-trans policies. This crucial resource tracks state and federal legislation impacting transgender rights, providing legal professionals, healthcare providers, and families with the tools to fight back against discriminatory laws affecting access to gender-affirming care, education, and public accommodations
Despite the Trump administration's efforts to restrict pro bono work and curtail transgender rights, Big Law attorneys continue supporting pro bono litigation. Many lawyers from major firms are actively contributing research to a new Policy Resource Hub for Transgender Rights, providing crucial legal support in the face of ongoing attacks on transgender individuals' rights
Federal government subpoenas target law firms and nonprofits holding information on lawsuits against the Trump administration's anti-transgender policies
Challenging anti-transgender policies requires legal action. Lawyers are questioning their ability to provide pro bono support amidst a surge of government actions targeting transgender rights. This underscores the critical need for resources like the Policy Resource Hub for Transgender Rights, which tracks state and federal policies impacting transgender individuals' access to healthcare, education, and legal protections
Inspired by the urgent need to protect transgender rights, Marlena Schultz and six colleagues from Clean Energy Counsel, a California sustainable energy firm, volunteered with Lawyers for Good Government's new Transgender Rights Policy Resource Hub. This crucial initiative tracks and analyzes federal and state policies impacting transgender individuals' access to healthcare, education, and public accommodations
“It was just seeing in the news these kinds of attacks that seem nonsensical,” she said. “I have a really good friend in Florida, a gay couple, and their children can’t go to school and do projects about [LGBTQ+ issues]. These laws affect people in a real way and anything we can do to help make it transparent is super important.”
Schultz and the other volunteers at her law firm research state policy in Nevada. Every day, attorneys spend an hour researching updates to state laws and policy, as well as bills that are in the pipeline. If there are any changes, they update the resource hub.
Silver sees the resource hub as a complement to other legislation trackers and threat assessment maps created by legal organizations and trans advocates. One tracker from the American Civil Liberties Union, for example, shows 604 anti-LGBTQ+ laws introduced in 2025 alone.
These trackers “can be very overwhelming and intimidating” to some readers who assume that proposed bills are law, Silver said. “[They have] convinced many people, including many members of our community, that it’s over, that there’s no fight left.”
The Lawyers for Good Government resource hub attempts to combat this impression by breaking down complicated laws in “an accessible and gender-affirming way,” Silver said. The goal is for the hub and its analyses to be easily understood by people of all backgrounds and generations.
Initially, the resource hub, which was modeled after a similar Lawyers for Good Government project about abortion, was going to solely focus on state laws around access to gender-affirming care for minors, as 26 states have passed such bans since 2020.
But after Trump was re-elected, and after the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care this summer, Silver decided to expand the hub to include questions about the ability to update one’s ID documents and use public sex-segregated accommodations, and whether state constitutions explicitly protected or excluded trans people.
Silver hopes the project will soon broaden its scope to also include the Trump administration’s attacks on incarcerated trans people, trans people in the military and trans federal workers.
This work is “highly personal” for Silver, a trans parent of two kids. They said that tracking this period of intense hostility toward trans people helps inform not only their family but many others across the country about what rights their children have and which states will be the safest to raise their kids.
“I do not believe we have a tenable path forward if we just end up with a patchwork” of rights, Silver said. “The second our nation said, ‘Well, I don’t think we can get the Equality Act, we can protect gay marriage,’ we lost as a nation. The second Alabama was able to say, ‘You can’t drive unless you’ve had bottom surgery and you’re not allowed health care till 19’ to young trans women, we lost as a nation.”
Another goal of the project is to educate attorneys who may not be familiar with legal issues impacting trans and gender-nonconforming people.
“I did a trans 101 video for our pro bono attorneys, talking about gender and sex, and getting folks thinking about what it might be like if you didn’t spend your entire life feeling that alignment between your identity and your body,” Silver said.
Silver hopes that with proper training, attorneys can use the resource hub more effectively to understand how to protect their clients, both in states where trans rights are codified into state constitutions and in states where there may be “untapped legal leverage.”
And Silver has been heartened to see that some states with explicit constitutional protections for trans people have used their state powers to stand up to the Trump administration.
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Earlier this month, a coalition of attorneys general from 16 states and Washington D.C. filed a lawsuit accusing Trump of circumventing state police powers to regulate health and welfare within their borders. Many of those states, like New Mexico, California and Nevada, have state constitutions that explicitly include gender identity as a protected class and shield people who travel from out-of-state for abortions or gender-affirming care from outside investigations.
The suit came months after the Justice Department demanded that hospitals hand over sensitive information related to gender-affirming care for people under 19 — including patient names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers — according to a copy of a hospital subpoena. At least 25 hospitals in states that do not have bans on gender care shuttered their services for trans youth, HuffPost found. The state attorneys general said the Trump administration was creating an “unconstitutional pressure campaign” against such care.
“If the federal government is encroaching on a state’s citizenry, their health and welfare, the state actually has real teeth to fight back,” Silver said. “Right now, what we’re trying to do is claw back some basic protections while we see the war coming. I’m not going to be happy until trans people can be free and live with full civil rights across the entire country.”
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