Jo Yurcaba

Becky Hormuth and her transgender son, Levi, thought they were protected after a Missouri law banning transition-related care for minors took effect in August.

The law grandfathered in those who had already been receiving puberty blockers or hormone therapy prior to Aug. 28, meaning they, in theory, would be able to continue their treatment. Levi, 16, began receiving testosterone in November of last year.

However, Missouri’s new law also allows providers of transition-related care for minors to be sued by their patients until they turn 36. As a result, the hospital where Levi had been receiving care for more than a year informed patients in September that it would no longer be providing such care, citing the “unsustainable liability” the law creates for health care professionals.

“We both just sat and cried together on the floor of his bedroom,” Becky said of the reaction she and Levi had upon hearing the news. “He connected with those doctors, and they’re like family to us — they know him personally. His big worry was, ‘Who’s going to help me now?’”

The Missouri law that affected Levi’s care is part of a national effort by Republican state lawmakers to restrict LGBTQ rights. More than 500 state bills targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people have been introduced in 2023, according to a tally by the American Civil Liberties Union. Of those bills, 75 became law, according to an NBC News analysis of the ACLU’s data.

The plurality of those laws — 21, including Missouri’s — are restrictions on transition-related care for minors, while 11 of them bar transgender student-athletes from playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities. Ten of the laws limit classroom instruction on LGBTQ issues and/or the use of pronouns within school that don’t align with a person’s birth sex, and eight restrict which restrooms trans people can use in schools or other publicly owned buildings. The remaining laws restrict drag performances in front of minors, define a person’s sex in state law as that which was assigned at birth, and create additional barriers for trans people to change the sex on their birth certificates, among other measures.

Though 2023 was a record year for legislation targeting LGBTQ people, some advocates and experts say those who support LGBTQ rights are still coming out ahead, since just 75 of the approximately 500 bills proposed have become law, or about 15%.

Bans on gender-affirming care

Levi was one of an estimated 105,200 trans teens living in the 22 states that have laws restricting gender-affirming care as of October 2023, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA Law. Supporters of the laws argue that such care is experimental for minors and that these young people shouldn’t be able to make life-altering health care decisions. However, more than a dozen major medical organizations — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association — support such care and have opposed the state bans.

Becky said she has been planning for Missouri’s trans health care restrictions since the spring, when state officials started trying to limit minors’ access to transition-related care. At the time, she said, she didn’t know whether Levi would be grandfathered in. She hasn’t missed a refill for Levi’s testosterone and has rationed it so they have enough for next year.

Sitting in his mom’s car outside of his therapist’s office one day last month after school, Levi said he was worn out from the back-and-forth over whether he will have access to his health care.

“I’ve been hit with multiple waves of depression recently, and I’ve been lacking in my schoolwork because of all this,” he said.

In the spring, in addition to ensuring she has plenty of testosterone for Levi, Becky said she also reached out to the gender development program at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago — a nearly five-hour drive from their home — to get on its waitlist in anticipation of Missouri passing the ban. She said she hopes Levi will have his first appointment there early next year.

The Hormuths and others affected by laws targeting LGBTQ people have been waiting for judges to rule on lawsuits filed against the measures.

So far, judges have issued temporary blocks, either partial or full, against gender-affirming care restrictions passed this year in Florida, Georgia, Montana and Indiana. Judges have upheld restrictions on gender-affirming care passed this year in Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas.

The plaintiffs in the Tennessee case appealed to the Supreme Court last month. If the court decides to take the case, it would be the first time it has considered a restriction on puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery for minors.

In the meantime, Levi said, the climate at his school has become more hostile. In one case, he said kids threw things at him on the bus and called him slurs. The incident was caught on camera, Becky said, and Francis Howell School District, where Becky is also a teacher, found that two students violated a district policy against harassment based on race, gender, sexuality and other protected categories when they made derogatory comments about Levi’s gender identity and threw objects at him, according to a letter provided to NBC News that the district sent to the Hormuths.

Jennifer Jolis, a spokesperson for the district, said it cannot comment on matters involving specific students due to privacy laws.

Restrictions on school instruction, sports participation

Educational institutions — from public elementary schools to private colleges that receive state funding — have become ground zero for the conservative-led effort to limit LGBTQ rights and access to information about the community. State bills signed into law this year have affected classroom instruction, extracurricular participation and access to sex-segregated school facilities, among other things.

Eleven states now have laws affecting what teachers can say about LGBTQ issues and how they can show up at work, with all but one of these measures having been passed this year.

On Wednesday, three Florida public school teachers sued the state Education Department over Florida’s Parental Rights in Education act, or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

When the law was initially signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in March 2022, it prohibited “classroom instruction” on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” The measure was then expanded in May to prohibit such classroom instruction from prekindergarten through eighth grade, restrict health education in sixth through 12th grade, and restrict what pronouns teachers and students can use.

After signing the first iteration of the bill, DeSantis said it ensures children will get “an education, not an indoctrination.” The expanded version, he said earlier this year, ensures teachers and students won’t be “forced to declare pronouns in school or be forced to use pronouns not based on biological sex.”

One of the three teachers who sued the state, AV Schwandes, who also goes by AV Vary, was fired in October for using the gender-neutral honorific “Mx.” instead of “Ms.” or “Mr.” in emails and other school communications.

Schwandes began using “Mx.” at the start of the school year, and a few weeks later the principal at Florida Virtual School, where Schwandes taught high school science, requested that Schwandes use a traditional honorific. When Schwandes refused, they received a directive, which they provided to NBC News, that said they had to change their courtesy title to comply with the law.

In mid-September, when Schwandes initially refused to change their honorific to “Ms.” or “Mr.,” they were suspended. They said they then suggested other gender-neutral titles they could use such as “professor,” “teacher” or “coach,” but Schwandes said staffers in the human resources department told them professor was a title used in college environments and not K-12 schools. Schwandes was terminated six weeks later, on Oct. 24, because they would not change their title.

The Florida Virtual School said in an emailed statement: “As a Florida public school, FLVS is obligated to follow Florida laws and regulations pertaining to public education. This includes laws … pertaining to the use of Personal Titles and Pronouns within Florida’s public school system.”

In addition to their lawsuit, Schwandes filed a complaint last month with the Florida Commission on Human Relations and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging the school discriminated against them based on their gender identity and violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the largest education workers union in the state, said he has heard from many LGBTQ teachers who are afraid of displaying photos of their families on their desks. He said what he hears from teachers the most is that the parental rights law and others restricting education in the state make it harder for them to do their jobs.

“The biggest question we get from teachers is if a student raises an issue that’s relevant to the class discussion, but it’s talking about gender or gender identity or sexual orientation,” Spar said. “Do we have to stop that conversation? And that’s where a lot of the confusion comes in.”

A judge dismissed a suit against Florida’s law in February, prior to the expansion, saying the plaintiffs didn’t have legal standing.

Currently, 23 states have laws on the books restricting which school sports teams transgender athletes can join, with about half of those laws being passed this year. Proponents of these measures say they help ensure fairness in women’s sports, while critics say they lack scientific evidence to prove trans women have an unfair advantage and that they marginalize trans students.

A Florida high school made national headlines last month when hundreds of its students staged a walkout after their principal and several other school officials were reportedly reassigned due to a trans student’s participation on the girls volleyball team. Earlier this week, the school was fined and put on probation, while the student has been barred from participating in any school sports for 11 months.

The laws specific to education have also trickled down to affect schools’ internal policies and school boards.

Last month, a Texas high school removed a trans student from his lead role in the school’s production of “Oklahoma!,” citing a new school policy that said students must play theater roles that match the sex on their birth certificates. After backlash from the largely conservative local community, the Sherman Independent School District reversed that decision and reinstated the student, Max Hightower, and other students who weren’t trans but had lost their roles playing characters that didn’t match their birth sex.

The rise and fall of drag bans

This year was the first to see state lawmakers file bills restricting drag performances in front of minors and/or in public spaces, which supporters of the legislation argue are necessary to protect children from inappropriate entertainment.

Lawmakers in at least 16 states introduced restrictions targeting drag in 2023, according to an NBC News analysis. Just six became law, and so far, they have been the least likely to hold up to judicial scrutiny.

Judges struck down two laws in Tennessee and Texas and temporarily blocked a restriction in Florida and another in Montana that specifically regulates events at public libraries where drag performers read to children. 

Laws in Arkansas and North Dakota were so watered down during state legislative debates that advocates no longer consider them to be targeting drag.

Bracing for 2024

As Becky and Levi continue to grapple with the effects of Missouri’s trans care ban, they are anxiously looking ahead to the next legislative session in January. Becky said she fears 2024 could usher in more legislation targeting Levi and other LGBTQ people in the state. She cited recent reporting by independent journalist and advocate Erin Reed, who found that Missouri lawmakers have prefiled at least 21 bills targeting LGBTQ people.

“Some days when I wake up, I have that constant worry, because today is another day that’s gone by or going by, and it’s another day that’s closer to January,” Becky said.

It’s not just state laws that have her anxious about the new year: The school board for Levi’s district is also considering a policy to ban trans students from using the bathrooms that align with their gender identities. This led Levi, a senior, to decide that he won’t return to school for his last semester and will instead take his final credit either over the summer at his high school or at the local community college. As a result, he will miss homecoming, prom and graduation. Becky said she and her husband plan to sue if the bathroom policy is passed. The Francis Howell School District Board of Education did not return a request for comment.

Jolis, the district spokesperson, said the district does not comment on threatened or pending litigation, though she did confirm that a policy addressing restroom and locker room access had been proposed.

Gabriele Magni, an assistant professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and director of the school’s LGBTQ Politics Research Initiative, said the country likely hasn’t seen the end of legislation targeting LGBTQ people because it’s heading into an election year.

Early tracking of next year’s bills shows Magni could be right. Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist for the ACLU, said the nonprofit is tracking 212 bills targeting LGBTQ people that have either been prefiled for the 2024 session or carried over from the 2023 session.

Magni said many of the bills that have become law in the last several years have succeeded in part because their supporters frame them as protecting children. He said the reason the majority of the bills did not pass is likely because they were not intended to pass in the first place. He said many Republican officials use them to drum up media attention, fundraise and drive voters to polls.

At the same time, he said, the fact that 2023 is still a record year for the proposal and passage of anti-LGBTQ laws shows that the tactic is spreading across states because Republicans now believe such legislation is necessary to be accepted by and supported within their party. In 2022, conservative lawmakers introduced more than 300 bills targeting LGBTQ people, and just 29 became law (less than 10%), according to the Human Rights Campaign. In 2021, lawmakers introduced more than 250 such bills, and 17 became law (about 7%), according to the HRC.

“This became a sort of vicious cycle in which no one wanted to be left behind,” Magni said. “They don’t want to be seen as less conservative or less active on these, and so in some cases in some states, we see the introduction of bills just more to not fall behind in these conservative ranking credentials rather than hoping that it will become legislation.”

The historic amount of legislation has also led to an equally historic level of protest on either side. Students have coordinated nationwide walkouts and protesters have packed state legislatures, while human rights groups have documented more than 300 anti-LGBTQ incidents in just the last year, including bomb threats against hospitals that provide transition-related care to minors and armed protesters outside of drag shows.

Phillip Hightower, whose trans son, Max, was removed and then reinstated in his school’s production of “Oklahoma!,” said he and his family won their fight for Max because more parents spoke out once they realized they had support, both within their mostly conservative community and across the country.

“Once it started to gain traction nationally, they felt safer,” he said.

Quoting 2019’s “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” Hightower said, “We’ve got friends out there. They’ll come if they know there’s hope.”

Brian Kerekes, a high school statistics teacher in Florida, said he froze like “a deer in headlights” when a student asked him a personal question at the beginning of the school year this month.

He said the student looked around the classroom, saw a small Pride flag, then asked, “Are you gay?”

Kerekes said that his identity is no secret and that he is one of a few out gay teachers in his school. But under a new state law that restricts the instruction of LGBTQ topics, he feared that his answer could somehow be illegal, he said.

“I said something to the effect of, ‘I don’t think I can tell you that,’” Kerekes said. “And she’s like, ‘Why not?’ And I said, ‘It’s kind of the state law now.’”

Kerekes said the exchange is just one example of the variety of difficult situations that he and his colleagues in Osceola County have had to navigate under Florida’s recently expanded Parental Rights in Education act, or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Battles over what content is appropriate for children — in books, history classes, health classes and elsewhere — are dominating school board meetings and state legislatures across the country. In most of these debates, one side portrays LGBTQ-inclusive curricula and transgender-inclusive school policies as inappropriate or harmful for minors, with some conservative activists and elected officials going so far as to describe such content as “grooming,” resurfacing a decades-old moral panic about queer people. 

Nowhere has that battle been more pronounced than in Florida, which made national headlines in the spring of 2022 when the state Legislature debated — and Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, ultimately signed — the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill. Initially, the measure prohibited “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” DeSantis signed an expanded version of the law in May that prohibits such instruction from prekindergarten through eighth grade and restricts health education in sixth through 12th grade.

Seventeen states enacted more than 30 new LGBTQ-related education laws in 2023, which will all be in effect for the 2023-24 school year unless they are blocked in court, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. 

In addition to Florida, five states — Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and North Carolina — enacted restrictions this year on LGBTQ-related instruction in schools. Currently, 11 states have laws censoring discussions of LGBTQ people or issues in schools and several additional states have laws requiring parental notification of LGBTQ-inclusive curricula, according to the Movement Advancement Project, or MAP, an LGBTQ research think tank. 

Iowa’s prohibition on the instruction of LGBTQ-related topics in kindergarten through sixth grade includes additional provisions that require school libraries to conduct regular reviews to ensure books don’t include sexually explicit material, allow parents to opt their children out of sex education and mandate school staff to immediately inform parents if they believe a child “has expressed a gender identity that is different” than the sex on the child’s birth certificate.

Ten states enacted new laws that bar transgender student athletes from playing on the school sports teams that align with their gender identities, bringing the total to 23 states, according to MAP, with the majority of these state measures applying to both K-12 schools and colleges.

Seven states have new laws that bar schools from requiring teachers (and, in some cases, other students) from using pronouns for students that don’t align with their sex assigned at birth. Florida’s expanded Parental Rights in Education act also bars transgender teachers from sharing their pronouns with students.

Five states have enacted laws so far this year that bar trans students and school staff from using school facilities that align with their gender identities, bringing the current total to nine states with such laws, according to MAP. 

Florida also enacted a law that prohibits colleges and universities from spending state and federal funds on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The law also restricts courses that could promote “social activism,” such as race and gender studies.

‘Educated, not indoctrinated’

Supporters of restrictions on LGBTQ-related content argue that it is inappropriate for children, and that parents should be allowed to determine their children’s access to such information. 

“Parents deserve the first say on when and how certain social topics are introduced to their children,” Iowa state Rep. Skyler Wheeler, the Republican who sponsored the state’s parental rights law, said in March after the bill passed the state House, according to the Des Moines Register. 

He added that “parents should be able to send their children to school and trust they are being educated, not indoctrinated,” nearly quoting language used by DeSantis when he signed the original version of Florida’s parental rights law. 

DeSantis defended the expansion of the law after signing it in May, saying teachers and students would “never be forced to declare pronouns in school or be forced to use pronouns not based on biological sex.”

“We never did this through all of human history until like, what, two weeks ago?” DeSantis said of people using pronouns that are different from those associated with their assigned sex. “Now this is something, they’re having third graders declare pronouns. We’re not doing the pronoun Olympics in Florida. It’s not happening here.”

Students and educators ‘are under assault’

Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the country, which represents public school teachers and staff, said the laws have created a culture of fear among educators nationwide. 

“We are in a moment where our students are under assault, teachers and other educators are under assault, parents are under assault,” said Pringle, who taught middle school science for 31 years. “People are afraid. They’re afraid for their livelihood. They’re afraid for their lives.”

Pringle noted that the teacher shortage is “chronic and growing” across the country because teachers are dealing with unprecedented challenges, including the effects of the pandemic, burnout and low pay.

She pointed to a 2022 NEA survey that found 55% of its members said they were planning on leaving education sooner than they intended because of the pandemic, compared to 37% in 2021. On top of that, she said teachers have told her they feel like the public doesn’t respect their expertise, and the new laws are an example of that. 

“That’s at the heart of what’s happening right now, where people who haven’t spent a day in our classrooms are telling us what to teach and how to teach and who to teach,” Pringle said. “We spend our lives trying to create those culturally responsive, inclusive, caring, joyful environments for kids, because we know that’s at the heart of them being able to learn every day.”

Michael Woods, a high school special education teacher in Palm Beach County, Florida, said he has encountered a number of difficult situations under the state’s new law. He has been advising a student for three years who uses a different name and pronouns than those assigned at birth. He said he’ll have to tell that student that he can no longer refer to them that way until they return a state-mandated form signed by their parents.

“We’re essentially telling kids, in my opinion, as a gay man, ‘You know what, go back in the closet,’” Woods said. “We’ve taken something as simple as a name that a student calls themselves and made it shameful.”

Lola, a 12-year-old seventh grader in Winter Haven, Florida, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said the state’s new education-related laws have made kids in their school afraid to come out or talk about their identities publicly. 

“A lot of students come out to me, because at school I’m openly queer and nonbinary,” Lola said. 

They said students have also asked them questions about their family, because they have two moms, and in three cases, Lola said teachers told them they can’t discuss their family on school premises. 

Lola’s discussion with their classmates would not break the law, which specifically mentions instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity from school staff. But Kerekes said teachers are avoiding LGBTQ subjects entirely out of fear that something they say or do could be interpreted as illegal or reported by a parent, who could sue the school district under the Parental Rights in Education act.

“I’m just talking about my parents,” Lola said. “Students shouldn’t be getting in trouble for talking about their life just because it’s different from the norm.”

Because of the part of Florida’s law that bars students from using bathrooms that don’t align with their assigned sex at birth, Lola said they have to walk to the nurse’s office, which is in a separate building, to use a unisex bathroom. 

Lola said there are other trans kids at school who are too shy to ask to use a different bathroom, so they’ll avoid using the bathroom for the entire school day. 

Advocates say legislation that removes LGBTQ-inclusive books and curricula or allows teachers to use the wrong pronouns for students harms their mental health, while supportive policies do the opposite. 

Research released Thursday by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that LGBTQ middle and high school students who had access to one of four school-related protective factors — gender-neutral bathrooms, LGBTQ-inclusive history lessons, a gender-sexuality alliance (GSA) club or teachers that respect their pronouns — had 26% lower odds of attempting suicide. 

In Osceola County, Kerekes said he has inherited his school’s GSA club from a teacher who left last year. Some teachers in Florida, including Woods, have stopped hosting club meetings temporarily because they’re not sure how the new law affects them, but Kerekes said he will continue his school’s and hopes to have the first meeting this week.

The Montana State Library Commission voted Tuesday to leave the American Library Association, the oldest and largest library association in the world, because the ALA’s president described herself as a “Marxist lesbian” in a social media post last year.

Emily Drabinski, who was elected president of the ALA in April 2022 and took office this month, celebrated her election in a social media post that has since been deleted. 

“I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is the president-elect of @ALALibrary,” Drabinksi wrote in a tweet last year. “I am so excited for what we will do together. Solidarity! And my mom is SO PROUD I love you mom.”

During a meeting Tuesday, Tom Burnett, a member of the Montana State Library Commission, made a motion to “immediately withdraw” the state library from the ALA and send the association a letter to explain that “our oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist,” according to the Montana Free Press.

In a statement published on its website Thursday, the ALA — a nonpartisan nonprofit founded in 1876 — outlined its mission, described how its presidents are elected and noted that ALA’s operational decisions are “made by ALA staff leadership working with a full range of committees and advisory groups.”

It also described how the Montana State Library has benefited from ALA membership, including more than $218,000 in program grants over the past two years and a 24% increase in federal funding from 2019 to 2023. 

“Despite the decision in Montana this week, ALA remains committed to providing essential support, resources, and opportunities for every library and library worker in every state and territory across the nation to help them better serve their communities,” the group said.

Drabinski did not immediately return a request for comment. 

After about an hour of public comment Tuesday, the commission voted 5-1-1 in favor of the motion. Commission Chair Peggy Taylor abstained, and Commissioner Brian Rossmann, the only active librarian on the commission, cast the one opposing vote. 

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Dana Gonzalez, who spoke in favor of withdrawing from the ALA, said the commission “ought not promote, celebrate or support what scripture condemns” and then quoted Bible scriptures that she said condemned what Drabinski wrote in her tweet, according to the Daily Montanan.

Bozeman parent Cheryl Tusken also spoke in favor of the motion. 

“I think this is a really good move to send a really clear signal to our national organizations that we are not in agreement with the direction they are taking these organizations,” Tusken said, according to the Montana Free Press.

Rossmann, who works at the Montana State University Library, said the ALA presidency is “largely a ceremonial role,” the Montana Free Press reported. 

Susan Gregory, the director of the Bozeman Public Library, spoke in opposition to the measure. In her 40 years of involvement with the ALA, she said, she has never seen the organization provide a program or presentation about Marxism.

“We don’t leave the United States because we don’t like or agree with whomever the sitting President of the United States is,” Gregory said in a written statement to the commission. “I hope that the Montana State Library Commission will understand the critical importance of remaining in our professional association so that we know what is happening in the world, our country and neighboring states to improve public libraries.”

Last year, the Montana State Library Commission voted down a proposed logo that used rainbow colors because some members said it didn’t clearly convey the library’s work. During debate over the logo, multiple members who ultimately voted against it said it looked too similar to the LGBTQ Pride flag, the Montana Free Press reported. The commission subsequently adopted an alternate logowith an updated color scheme. 

The commission’s actions are examples of a larger trend of libraries being pulled into the national debate over what information children can access freely at school or in libraries — particularly when that information includes LGBTQ people or themes. 

Conservative advocacy groups and some elected officials have painted LGBTQ books and content in schools as “grooming,” using a decades-old false moral panic about LGBTQ people. 

In the last few years, parents and local conservative advocacy groups have started asking for certain books to be removed completely from schools and public libraries. In its annual book censorship report, the ALA found that there was a 75% increase in the number of challenges against books between 2021 and 2022. 

Of the 13 books that made the ALA’s “Most Challenged Books” list in 2022, seven — more than half — were challenged for having LGBTQ content.