With New Momentum, Republican States Push Broader Limits for Trans Americans

[Lori Dee ✅]

With New Momentum, Republican States Push Broader Limits for Trans Americans
In states that once focused mainly on health care and sports for transgender minors, debates now revolve around the validity of transgender identity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/us/republican-states-transgender-rights-restrictions.html 🔗
The New York Times - Amy Harmon
Feb. 18, 2026, Updated 6:03 p.m. ET

After a year in which the Trump administration has pressed to limit the ways Americans can identify as transgender in public life, Republicans are pushing the issue at the state level with new zeal.

In Kansas, lawmakers voted on Wednesday to invalidate the driver's licenses of transgender residents who changed the gender markers on their licenses under a state policy that started allowing such changes almost two decades ago.

Idaho's House of Representatives this week advanced a bill that would allow people to sue private businesses that allow transgender people to use restrooms consistent with their gender identity.

In Utah, legislators are weighing removing transgender people from groups protected by a state law barring discrimination in housing and employment.

Oklahoma lawmakers are considering expanding the state's ban on gender-transition medical treatment for minors to include adults, and a Florida House panel has advanced a bill prohibiting public sector employers from requiring workers to use the preferred pronouns of transgender co-workers.

Supporters of transgender rights say they view this year's state proposals as a concerted effort to chip away at protections of trans people at the state level to build support for even broader limits at a national level.

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Over the last six years, the Movement Advancement Project found that states that adopted a restriction on transgender people had always gone on to pass more such limits.

[Iztaccihuatl]

Hmmm. Say, a trans person and their best buddy walk into a Chick-fil-a in Idaho, go into the bathroom of the trans person's gender identity, take a picture/video to prove they were there and then sue Chick-fil-a for allowing trans folx in their bathrooms? 🤔

In all honesty, my recommendation to all private businesses in Idaho would be to label all bathrooms to be all gender bathrooms and just put a sign indicating the number of stalls and urinals at the entrance.