As Wyoming slides further to the right, legislators double down on trans bills

[Jessica_Rose]

As Wyoming slides further to the right, legislators double down on trans bills

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/as-wyoming-slides-further-to-the-right-legislators-double-down-on-trans-bills/ar-AA1ABClv?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=0b9f28845ee947358979adfc68bfa68f&ei=5

Story by Cy Neff in Cheyenne (10 March 2025)

When Wyoming legislators in 2022 passed a law banning trans girls from competing in middle and high school girls' sports, the Cowboy State, by its governor's own estimate, had a grand total of four transgender student athletes competing within its boundaries.

Lawmakers also proposed legislation requiring public facilities from restrooms to sleeping quarters to correspond with assigned sex at birth, restrooms in public schools to have exclusive use designations by assigned sex at birth, prohibiting the state from requiring the use of preferred pronouns, and establishing legal definitions for "biological sex", "man" and "woman".

Five of the seven bills made it through the legislature. The volume of proposals spotlights the new conservative vision of the role of government emerging in the state, as well as the Republican divisions on the issue.

But the intense focus on the issue comes as Wyoming, never exactly a liberal state, has slid further to the right in recent years, a trend evidenced by an escalation of social issue bills that wouldn't be out of place in Washington DC or other red-state legislatures.