The rollback of transgender rights, from statehouses to the Supreme Court

Beginning with a single Idaho sports law in 2020, Republican-controlled states built a template that spread nationwide within three years, and the second Trump administration then applied the same approach across the entire federal government.

It started with school sports. In March 2020, Idaho passed the first state law in the nation barring transgender girls and women from competing on female sports teams, immediately challenged in court. Montana passed its own version the following year; the state supreme court struck it down, and the legislature reinstated it in 2025. Versions of the same bill spread to more than a dozen states over the next few years.

Medical care bans followed the same template. In April 2021, Arkansas became the first state to ban gender-affirming medical care, puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery, for transgender minors; the 8th Circuit struck it down as unconstitutional in 2023. That didn't stop the next state. Alabama passed a similar ban in 2022 with felony penalties of up to 10 years in prison for doctors who provide the care. Texas banned it in 2023 and required minors already receiving treatment to be weaned off; its state supreme court upheld the law 8 to 1. Tennessee's version reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in June 2025's United States v. Skrmetti that state bans on this care for minors do not violate equal protection, clearing the way for every other state's ban to stand as well.

The second Trump administration applied the state playbook federally within its first two weeks. Executive orders banned transgender military service and directed the removal of an estimated 15,000 currently serving transgender troops, ended passports with an "X" gender marker, and ordered federal prisons to stop housing transgender women in women's facilities, a directive a federal court has repeatedly had to enjoin after finding the Bureau of Prisons noncompliant. In February 2025, an executive order directed agencies to interpret Title IX to bar transgender women and girls from female school sports nationwide, the federal version of the Idaho law five years earlier. The Department of Veterans Affairs ended gender dysphoria treatment for new patients, affecting a veteran population VA estimates at more than 130,000. And a January 2025 order leveraged federal research and education funding to pressure hospitals into closing youth gender care programs, which many did even in states where the care remains legal.