Introduction

With Florida State Sen. Randy Fine’s recent (closer than expected) election to Congress, we can expect him to take his ugly anti-LGBTQ+ animus from Tallahassee to Washington, D.C. But the pipeline of hate from state legislatures to Congress has gone on far longer than Florida’s latest special election. What can look like disparate attacks in state legislatures targeting the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ people are actually all part of one national strategy to use states  as beta testing grounds  for the right wing’s anti-freedom agenda–with the ultimate goal of enacting these policies at a federal level. Project 2025 may be new to Washington, but it seems awfully familiar to people in states like Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and others. 

Over the last several years, state legislatures have lurched from bans on sports participation for transgender youth to restrictions on bathroom access and health care to censorship of LGBTQ+ content and people from classrooms to a recent surge in resolutions demanding that the Supreme Court overturn its Obergefell ruling that made marriage equality the law of the land. And at each step, bills across multiple states mirror each other–as they are all influenced by right wing organizations linked to the national Project 2025 manifesto like the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the Heritage Foundation. 

The state level policy trends, as well as information about the organizations driving the rash of anti-LGBTQ+ hate in America, can give insight into where anti-equality majorities in Congress and the Trump-Vance Administration may go next.

Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills in State Legislatures are a Coordinated Effort

Over the years, trends have emerged in state legislatures as particular types of bills are filed en masse as part of a broader effort to divide and conquer LGBTQ+ rights. Initially, these bills targeted marriage equality directly and indirectly.  Bills that would erode or eliminate legal protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity under the guise of protecting religious belief continue to be introduced and passed even in 2025.  But starting in 2020 opponents of LGBTQ+ equality explicitly - and admittedly - began attacking transgender youth.

2020

79 bills were introduced that targeted transgender people specifically, including 32 bills banning transgender students from playing school sports as well as 26 bans on transgender healthcare for adolescents. The first anti-trans sports bill - drafted by ADF - was passed in Idaho, and was enjoined almost immediately. ADF joined the litigation to defend the law. When the AP did investigative reporting on the influx of sports bans introduced across the country, it found that  “in almost every case, sponsors cannot cite a single instance in their own state or region where such participation had caused problems.” In the same article, ADF cites back to its own test lawsuit in Connecticut, where it raised the question of transgender students participating in sports nationally for the first time.  

2021 

150 bills that targeted transgender people specifically were filed, including 84 bills that would ban trangender students from playing school sports - 9 of these 84 passed into law. Nine bathroom bills were filed, as were 45 bills banning transgender healthcare. Arkansas passed the first ban on transgender healthcare into law, overriding the Governor’s veto, using a model law pushed by the right-wing.

2022

351 anti-LGBTQ bills were filed in 2022, with 150 of them specifically targeting transgender people.  29 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were passed into law, 11 of which were bans on transgender youth playing sports (of 82 introduced) and 3 related to gender-affirming care (of 44 introduced).  Of these, one banned only surgery, which is not generally available to minors. Two bills preventing students from accessing safe bathrooms at schools passed.   

The emerging trend in 2022, however, was the rhetoric around teachers, books, and curriculum being responsible for allegedly teaching students how to be LGBTQ+. Seventy-three bills were filed to censor curriculum, ban books, or otherwise attempt to regulate how educators could relate to LGBTQ+ students, including the infamous “Don’t Say LGBTQ+” bill in Florida that year. The conversation generated by the far right around this bill, including by the SPLC-designated hate group Moms for Liberty, echoed Anita Bryant’s infamous “Save Our Children” rhetoric, with a few far-right influencers reintroducing the phrase “groomer” to describe any person who didn’t support their censorship.  

In a matter of mere days, just ten people drove 66% of impressions for the 500 most viewed hateful “grooming” tweets — including Gov. Ron DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw, extremist members of Congress like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, and far-right figures like “Libs of TikTok” founder Chaya Raicheck.  Posts from these 10 people alone reached more than 48 million views, and the top 500 most influential “grooming” tweets all together were seen 72 million times. Then, in 2023, more than 100 bills were filed in state legislatures to censor curriculum and school library collections. 

2023  

The number of specifically anti-transgender bills filed rocketed to 257 (up from 147 in 2022), with 146 of those bills limiting or preventing transgender health care. By the end of 2023 - only 2 years after the first such bill passed into law - 23 states banned gender-affirming care in some way, including nearly every state with Republican majorities in the legislature and control of the Governorship. Groups like Family Policy Alliance and  Family Research Council claimed credit for helping to craft this legislation, Steven Miller’s America First Legal supported it, and ADF defended Alabama’s ban on transgender health care in court.  

In addition to the focus on curriculum censorship mentioned above, other bills that gained traction in 2023 were bills that purported to define sex in a way that excluded LGBTQ+ people, thereby removing important legal protections throughout the state’s legal code, and a bill known as the “Women’s Bill of Rights” which prevents transgender women from having access to spaces such as bathrooms, locker rooms, women’s correctional facilities, and domestic violence shelters.  

2024

The focus on curriculum censorship and banning books continued, as did the emphasis on banning healthcare for transgender people.  However, the focus of the latter shifted to healthcare paid for with public funds, including Medicaid, state CHIP, healthcare for people who are incarcerated, and for anyone who receives healthcare through a plan paid for with taxpayer dollars, using state facilities, or provided by a state employee. In most cases this includes healthcare for people who are employed by the state, city, county, public university or university hospital, as well as their dependents. This meant a surge in legislation now targeting access to care for transgender adults in addition to young people. The Heritage Foundation promoted this model. 

2025 (Thus far)

In addition to the other efforts to strip LGBTQ+ people of freedoms, there has been a surge in resolutions filed by state lawmakers demanding that the Supreme Court reverse its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which affirmed marriage equality as the law of the land.

• There have also been continued efforts to exclude transgender people from same-gender spaces such as bathrooms, carceral environments, and emergency shelters, as well as a relatively new effort to classify parents and doctors as child abusers because they’ve provided best practice, medically necessary health care to transgender youth. 
• In many cases, the language of these bills is identical – despite being filed in different states and by different sets of lawmakers. 

National Anti-LGBTQ+ Groups Are The Puppet Masters

• In 2023, Mother Jones published information obtained via a leak from the American College of Pediatricians, an anti-transgender junk science organization that got its start by opposing the right of same-sex couples to adopt children. From their reporting:
  • The organization received large in-kind donations from ADF and the Heritage Foundation, including media training and messaging guidance.
  • In exchange, those organizations frequently cite the American College of Pediatricians in their support for limiting the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ people.
  • The organization’s leadership saw anti-transgender attacks as the key to growing its dismal membership and wooing right wing funders in the wake of losses on marriage equality.
  • Just a few years after the anti-transgender rebrand, the organization’s members “commonly showed up at state legislatures, courts, and other official venues to testify in favor of bans on gender-affirming medical care for trans kids.”
• In a 2023 exposé, Rolling Stone detailed how ADF, the national right wing legal organization that has been named a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has orchestrated anti-LGBTQ+ attacks on a state and federal level. From their reporting:
  • As the ADF increases its financial capital and political influence, hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people have risen dramatically. In 2023, the Department of Homeland Security warned of domestic terror threats to the LGBTQ+ community and places of business, as well as churches, received violent threats for providing any signal of LGBTQ+ allyship.
  • According to experts who monitor extremist groups, ADF is a prime mover behind anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and legislation in the country and across the world.
• ADF was similarly exposed for its aims in a piece by The New Yorker’s David Kirkpatrick that same month, which revealed that:
  • ADF has authored at least 130 bills: During an internal meeting, the head of ADF’s legislative efforts said that the organization had “authored” at least 130 bills in 34 states last year; more than 30 were passed into law. That includes helping to pass anti-transgender sports bills in 23 states despite the proponents of these bills, including ADF Senior Counsel Matt Sharp, being unable to identify transgender youth participating in sports in their states.
  • ADF has weaponized SCOTUS nearly 20 times: Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe v. Wade, is only one of 15 Supreme Court cases that ADF has won; they were also involved in SCOTUS decisions that allowed a baker to refuse to make a cake for a same-sex wedding and a web-designer to refuse service for another same-sex wedding. They were also involved in a decision that allowed employer-sponsored health insurance to exclude birth control coverage, and a decision that permitted pandemic-related public health rules to be blocked.
  • Members of Congress are aiding in ADF’s influence on the Hill: Majority Leader Steve Scalise and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan both hosted an ADF reception for newly elected lawmakers earlier this year; the wife of Republican Senator Josh Hawley is also legal counsel at ADF and Senator Hawley has lectured at ADF’s Blackstone program for law students.
• In a 2023 interview with the New York Times, Terry Schilling, President of the right wing group American Principles Project, acknowledged the coordinated targeting of transgender people as a tool in the broader effort to curb freedoms. When asked how the anti-LGBTQ+ movement pivoted after losing the battle over marriage equality, Schilling said, “We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about. And we threw everything at the wall,” finding that attacks on transgender youth were what stuck.
• Over 100 of these right wing groups, including the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Principles Project, and the Heritage Foundation, went on to assist in the creation of Project 2025, the authoritarian blueprint now guiding President Donald Trump’s second term.
  • A previously-formed right wing coalition, called the “Promise to America’s Children,” which promoted similar anti-LGBTQ+ ideologies, featured many of these same member organizations.

Congress and the White House Are Taking Their Cues

• Federal officials are now bringing the beta-tested agenda to Washington, DC. In January, the House passed a nationwide ban on transgender youth participation in sports, the same kind of legislation that kicked off the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ attacks in state after state. That bill was defeated in the Senate last month.
• Throughout the 118th Congress, anti-equality lawmakers attempted to add over 100 anti-LGBTQ+ riders to federal appropriations bills, most of which mirrored the same anti-LGBTQ+ policies surging in state legislatures.
• The ties between the state legislation and federal legislation are clear - in fact, the Promise to America’s Children website includes proposed federal legislation that has shown up repeatedly in the states.
• The Trump-Vance Administration, following their Project 2025 right wing blueprint, have also taken their cues from the coordinated anti-LGBTQ+ agenda. Among other things, they have:
  • Attempted to bar transgender youth from participating in sports.
  • Attempted to block access to health care for transgender youth and their families.
  • Worked to censor mention of LGBTQ+ people and their historical contributions from classrooms and university campuses.
  • Slashed funding and resources for HIV/AIDS prevention globally.

The Pipeline of Hate is Not Just Policy – It’s Personnel

• Most recently, Florida State Senator Randy Fine was elected to Florida’s 6th Congressional District. Fine has been a key architect in the Florida legislature of the anti-LGBTQ+ crusade that has made the state and its leadership infamous.
  • Fine led the state’s ban on access to medically-necessary care for transgender youth.
  • He filed the bill aimed at restricting drag shows in the state, arguing that “damn right, we ought to” erase the LGBTQ+ community.
  • He captained the legislature’s attacks on Disney after the company disagreed with the Don’t Say Gay or Trans law.
  • He introduced the bill attempting to ban Pride flags (among others) from public buildings.
• Meanwhile, Project 2025’s key contributors now litter the federal government’s payroll.
  • Russ Vought, a primary Project 2025 author, is now the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
  • Peter Navarro, author of many of Project 2025’s now-realized tariff proposals, now counsels President Trump on trade and manufacturing.
  • According to Newsweek, “at least 31 people linked to Project 2025 have been tapped for jobs in [The Trump] Administration.”