While Texas’ Republican leaders are scrambling even further right and are attacking the state’s transgender residents in an effort to energize their base voters, Republican lawmakers in Arizona and the Republican governor of Utah are instead helping kill harmful bills targeting transgender people, especially trans youth.
LGBTQNation reports that Republican lawmakers in Arizona had helped stop three pieces of legislation that would have kept trans people from using bathrooms and locker rooms and from accessing gender-affirming healthcare. The bills they blocked also would have prohibited use of non-binary gender markers on government documents.
Republican state Rep. Michelle Udall blocked a bill in committee that would have allowed parents to sue schools that let trans student use bathroom and locker room facilities appropriate their gender identity. Republican House Speaker Russell Bowers helped stop legislation that would have allowed only male or female gender markers on state documents. And Republican state Sen. Tyler Pace help narrow down legislation that would have prohibited trans youth from accessing hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers to that the bill instead only banned “genital reassignment” surgeries for minors.
Pace said that it was hearing testimony from trans youth and their families that convinced him gender-affirming healthcare saves and improves lives.
LGBTQNation notes that even had those bills passed the Senate, Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey might well have vetoed them, since he has opposed anti-LGBTQ bills in the past.
Arizona lawmakers’ opposition to anti-trans bills comes a week after Utah’s Gov. Spencer Cox, also a Republican, promised to veto legislation there banning trans youth from playing on sports teams appropriate to their gender identity.
— Tammye Nash
