Texas Legislature Has More Anti-LGBTQ Bills Than Ever Before

This has been a pretty big year for the Texas Legislature, the pandemic and the winter storm gave the House and the Senate the opportunity to use their power to improve the lives of Texans almost immediately, and yet, many politicians are focusing their time and energy on filing bills that are far from helping others.

According to Ricardo Martinez, Equality Texas CEO, Texas has filed more anti-LGBTQ bills this session than any other state legislature.

House Bill 1399, sponsored by Rep. Matt Krause, would prohibit health care providers and physicians from performing gender confirmation surgery or prescribing, administering, or supplying puberty blockers or hormone treatment to anyone under the age of 18. 

Senate Bill 1311, by Sen. Bob Hall, would revoke the medical license of health care providers and physicians who perform such procedures or prescribe such drugs or hormones to people younger than 18. 

Additionally, the Senate recently passed Senate Bill 29, which would prevent public school students from participating in sports teams unless their sex assigned at birth aligns with the team’s designation. 

SB 29 was referred to the House Public Education Committee, where they held an emotional debate with more than 80 people testifying on the bill, most of them speaking against it. The bill was left pending in the Public Education Committee, which is chaired by state Democrat Rep. Harold Dutton

A lot of community members have already expressed their disagreement with the bill, including big businesses such as Amazon, Facebook, Dell, Intel, and Silicon Labs.

The NCAA, which allows transgender athletes to participate without limitation, has already issued a statement regarding the bill, “The NCAA continues to closely monitor state bills that impact transgender student-athlete participation,” it reads, “The NCAA believes in fair and respectful student-athlete participation at all levels of sport. The association’s transgender student-athlete participation policy and other diversity policies are designed to facilitate and support inclusion.”