After Republican electoral victories, GOP anti-trans student bills are back

The ability of trans kids in Arizona to be who they are at school is once again under attack, as Republican lawmakers, buoyed by November’s electoral wins, revive bills restricting preferred pronouns and prohibiting the use of school facilities based on gender identity.

Officially the second and third bills to be filed ahead of the 2025 legislative session, the return of the anti-trans proposals suggest that the GOP’s vitriolic focus on culture war issues isn’t over. 

And their revival comes despite Gov. Katie Hobbs’ vetoing near-identical versions of the bills earlier this year, during the 2024 legislative session, and in 2023. The Democrat has repeatedly warned Republican lawmakers that she will kill any anti-LGBTQ proposals that land on her desk. Christian Slater, a spokesman for Hobbs, wouldn’t comment on the new bills, but instead pointed to the governor’s criticism of the previous iterations as proof of her continued opposition.

Senate Bill 1002 forbids 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 that written agreement on record, the bill includes a caveat that allows school employees to disregard a student’s identity without consequences if they have “religious or moral” objections. 

Senate Bill 1003 bars trans students from locker rooms, bathrooms and hotel rooms on school trips that don’t match their biological sex. Schools that violate the bill’s mandates could face lawsuits from cisgender students seeking financial compensation for any “psychological, emotional and physical harm suffered”. 

The author of the bills, Sen. John Kavanagh, has unsuccessfully pushed legislation to keep trans Arizonans out of public facilities, including restrooms, for the past decade. Recently, the Fountain Hills Republican has shifted his focus to crippling inclusive school policies. That focus has drawn vocal and near unanimous support from the Republican legislative majority, mirroring a nationwide trend of hostility toward LGBTQ people from the party. 

But Hobbs’ veto stamp has proven a barrier against the passage of discriminatory legislation. To circumvent that inevitable rejection, Kavanagh attempted to send his policies directly to the November ballot this year, but the effort failed after one GOP senator broke from his colleagues and opposed doing so. 

This year will be the third year in a row Kavanagh proposes restricting the behavior of trans and gender nonconforming students across the state. In his view, the down-ballot success of the Republican Party in November shifted the political landscape in Arizona, and that provides a better opening for his policies. 

“The Democrats were given a fairly strong rebuke by the public on a number of issues,” he said. “There was clearly a rebuke to the ‘woke policies’ that drive these policies that say, ‘You are — in terms of sex — what you say you are’. I’m hoping that Democrats, especially swing district ones, and the governor, will have awakened to the ‘un-wokeness’ of the population on these issues and let these bills go through.”

While Democrats were angling to capture the legislative majority in the general election, voters instead solidified GOP control, awarding the party an extra seat in the state Senate and two more in the House of Representatives. That, according to Kavanagh, constitutes a mandate for Republicans to keep pushing for their top priorities, including what Democrats deride as out-of-touch “culture war issues” but Republicans defend as the protection of moral values. 

Kavanagh said he’d be willing to repackage the bills as ballot measures again. And, with an expanded GOP majority and the sole Republican opponent having been defeated in the primaries in part because of his opposition, Kavanagh said he expects a smoother path to the 2026 ballot. 

“In the end, the voters will get to decide if the governor vetoes this,” he said. “I have the votes.”

And Kavanagh said he’s confident Arizonans will support his proposals at the ballot box, because they, too, think inclusive policies have gone too far. 

“Nobody thinks that a 14-year-old high school co-ed should be standing in a shower naked next to a biological male who identifies as female,” he said. 

Kavanagh has repeatedly used alarmist imagery to defend his school facilities bill as necessary, despite not having any proof that such situations occur and frequent testimony from teachers and students that they don’t. 

And despite running the bill for the third time, he was still unable to provide any proof of his claims to the Arizona Mirror, dismissing the dearth of evidence as inconsequential next to the possibility that it could happen somewhere, someday. 

“I don’t know if it is or it isn’t (happening), but either way, it shouldn’t, so I’ll try to legislate that,” he said.

Jeanne Woodbury, who is trans and a lobbyist for Creosote Partners, a progressive lobbying firm that works with pro-LGBTQ groups, disputed the assertion that GOP lawmakers earned a carte blanche from Arizona voters on passing restrictive trans policies. While Republicans spent hundreds of millions on anti-trans ads in the 2024 election cycle, Woodbury said she’s skeptical that messaging is what convinced voters to cast their ballots in favor of GOP candidates. 

“I don’t see evidence that people were persuaded to vote one way or another because of the anti-trans advertising we saw leading up to the election, but I do think it is a way to legitimize those messages,” she said. 

A study of an anti-trans ad campaign launched by the Trump campaign in battleground states, including Arizona, found no “statistically significant shift” in voter attitudes or increase in the likelihood they would head to the polls. 

Other issues were likely more top of mind for voters, Woodbury said, including immigration and the economy, which led to GOP wins up and down the ballot. Instead, she said, the point was to test whether voters would tolerate the vitriol. 

The more insidious effect of anti-trans rhetoric on the political stage and in Kavanagh’s multi-year bills is that they chip away at public support for the trans community, Woodbury said. 

”Even if he’s never had success in getting them into law, they’ve been a major driving force in the turn against trans people,” she said. “It’s something that has a negative impact even when it doesn’t become law.” 

Recent surveys appear to bear that out. While Americans broadly support transgender people, with 74% — including 58% of Republicans — agreeing that trans people deserve respect and dignity, political anti-trans talking points seem to be making inroads. A 2023 joint polling project conducted in partnership between Arizona State University, Stanford University and the University of Houston found that 54% of Arizonans oppose the right of trans people to use the bathrooms that best align with their gender identity, 63% are against transgender participation in women’s sports and 51% disagree with minors receiving gender-affirming surgeries. 

Along with the dire outlook at the state level, trans students must now also contend with increased threats from the national level, Woodbury pointed out. Whereas the Biden administration expanded the scope of Title IX to ensure that transgender students can participate in public school athletic programs, use the school facilities that best reflect their gender identities and be referred to by their preferred pronouns, President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to roll back those protections on day one. 

In the past, Kavanagh’s policies have faced potentially violating Title IX as a legal barrier. But if the new shield is retracted, and the pronoun or school facilities ban successfully become law, that would constitute one less legal avenue for trans rights advocates to pursue. 

While other anti-trans policies — including Arizona’s law mandating proof of a “sex-change operation” or a court order before a trans person can correct their birth certificate — have been felled under more established federal protections, such as the equal protection guarantee in the Fourteenth Amendment, the ultimate decisions about whether to invalidate a law is up to the courts. 

And Kavanagh said he likes his chances with the U.S. Supreme Court, which is ruled by a conservative supermajority that has recently signaled an interest in upholding anti-trans laws. 

The high court is considering whether a Tennessee law banning gender affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for minors violates the Fourteenth Amendment. In 2022, Arizona Republicans outlawed gender affirming surgeries for minors, and unsuccessfully sought to include hormone therapy and puberty blockers in that ban. The court appears likely to back the Tennessee law. 

LGBTQ advocates fear that a favorable ruling for the Volunteer State could influence future cases concerning trans rights. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Arizona, is still mulling whether an Idaho law prohibiting trans students from using school bathrooms that align with their gender identity is unconstitutional. An appeal could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.