Transgender People in the United States: Being Systematically Erased

Trans demonstration in Washington

There are moments when you come across a piece of news and pause for a second. Not because you are surprised, but because you saw it coming, and it still hurts.

In early April 2026, the Trump administration terminated existing civil rights agreements with five school districts and one college. These were agreements meant to protect transgender students from discrimination. The U.S. Department of Education described those protections as “unnecessary and illegal burdens” based on a “radical transgender agenda.” Experts who have served under both Democratic and Republican administrations said there is simply no precedent for canceling already negotiated civil rights agreements with schools.¹

This is not an isolated case. It is part of a system.

This article aims to make that system visible. Not only in its legal dimension, but also in what it means for the everyday lives of real people.

I. The Starting Point: A Stroke of the Pen on Day One

On January 20, 2025, the first day of his second term in office, Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14168 titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” It declared that the U.S. government would henceforth recognize only two sexes, determined at conception and unchangeable. All federal agencies were instructed to remove references to “gender identity” from their records, halt funding for any gender-affirming measures, and deny transgender people accurate sex markers on federal documents.²

This order is the mother of all the measures that followed. It provides the legal and ideological framework from which law after law, directive after directive, and agreement after agreement has since been dismantled.

Anyone who wants to understand the developments of the last 15 months needs to know this starting point: the U.S. federal government has formally declared that transgender people do not exist.

II. The Body as a Battlefield: Bans on Medical Care

For many transgender people, gender-affirming medical care is not a matter of comfort, but of mental health and, in extreme cases, survival. All major U.S. medical organizations, representing more than 1.3 million physicians combined, describe it as evidence-based standard care.³

Federal Level

On January 28, 2025, Trump signed the executive order “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” which aims to restrict access to gender-affirming care for minors nationwide.⁴ The title itself is already a political instrument: it describes medical treatments supported by the entire medical profession as mutilation.

In June 2025, the Trump administration issued a final rule removing gender-affirming care from the list of benefits covered by ACA insurance plans, effective starting with the 2026 plan year.⁵ At the same time, the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, published a report questioning the scientific basis of this care. Medical professional associations sharply criticized the report for its flawed methodology, the spread of misinformation, and the promotion of practices resembling conversion therapy.³

The effect is already measurable: major medical centers such as Children’s National in Washington, D.C., and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles have closed their pediatric treatment programs for transgender youth. Not because they wanted to, but because of legal and regulatory pressure.³

State Level

A ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 18, 2025, in United States v. Skrmetti fundamentally changed the legal landscape for the states. The Court held that Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.⁶ This has effectively undermined federal lawsuits against similar state laws.

As of July 2025, 40 percent of all transgender youth between the ages of 13 and 17 were living in the 27 states that had banned gender-affirming care. That amounts to around 120,000 children and teenagers.⁷ Ten states, including Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, also exclude this care from Medicaid coverage for people of all ages, not just minors.⁸

III. Everyday Life Under Attack: Documents, Bathrooms, Names

Laws that ban medical care are often highly visible to the outside world. But there is also another category of laws: those that wear down everyday life. Gradually, systematically, and sometimes almost unnoticed by those who are not affected themselves.

IDs: Identity Erased by Law

In February 2026, Kansas Senate Bill 244 took effect. It is unique in the United States: it declares all driver’s licenses and birth certificates invalid if they list a sex different from the one assigned at birth, with no transition period at all. Transgender people in Kansas were required to replace their driver’s licenses immediately.⁹

What that means can hardly be captured in neutral legal language. Imagine this: you have been living as a woman for years. You have a driver’s license that reflects that. And from one day to the next, you are handed a document that identifies you as a man. At every police stop, at the doctor’s office, when checking into a hotel, when buying alcohol.

The federal government has followed the same path: since 2025, new passports have been issued only with the sex assigned at birth. In a 6 to 3 decision, the Supreme Court allowed that policy to remain in effect.² In Idaho, a court order from January 2026 has made changes to birth certificates impossible. Since those changes are required in order to update a driver’s license, any correction there has effectively become impossible as well.¹⁰

Data from the U.S. Transgender Survey show that 22 percent of people who had to present an identity document that did not match who they are experienced a negative consequence, whether verbal harassment, discrimination, or physical violence.¹¹

Bathrooms: Public Space as a Zone of Fear

Anyone who has never had to think about which bathroom to use can hardly imagine what it means when that decision is suddenly regulated by law and backed by penalties.

As of March 2026, 22 U.S. states have laws that prohibit transgender people from using bathrooms that match their gender identity.¹² In 2025, Texas signed the Women’s Privacy Act, Senate Bill 8, into law, extending those restrictions to all public buildings, schools, and universities. Institutions that violate the law can face fines of up to $125,000.¹³ Idaho is currently debating a law that would make using the “wrong” bathroom a misdemeanor, including in private businesses and publicly accessible facilities.¹²

The Kansas law goes even further: it explicitly allows any person to sue someone they suspect of being transgender for using the “wrong” bathroom.⁹ In this way, social surveillance is being written into law. Anyone whose appearance does not match expectations can become the target of a complaint, regardless of who that person actually is.

What this means in everyday life is that transgender people avoid public spaces. They plan routes so they will not need a bathroom. They drink less so they do not have to go. They stop going to concerts, museums, or the movies. That may sound trivial. It is not.

Name Changes: Being Outed by Law

In Wisconsin, a law dating back to 1858 requires anyone who wants to change their name to publish that change in a newspaper. Originally intended to make it harder for people fleeing debt to disappear, the law now, according to legal experts, effectively creates a publicly accessible database of people presumed to be transgender. As a result, it exposes them to the risk of discrimination, harassment, and violence. So far, there is no exception for transgender people.¹¹

IV. Legal Erasure: When Laws Make People Invisible

Beyond specific individual bans, there is an even more fundamental level: laws that simply erase transgender people from the legal system.

Several states, including Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, have passed laws that effectively abolish all legal rights connected to gender identity. Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee also prohibit any change to birth certificates, forcing people to out themselves every time they present identification.¹⁴

At the federal level, the Trump administration instructed the EEOC, the agency responsible for protecting workers against discrimination, to stop pursuing cases on behalf of transgender employees. Ongoing cases are being dropped.² Formally, workplace protections under the Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock decision still exist. But the agency meant to enforce them has effectively been switched off.

The situation is especially severe in prisons: since 2026, Federal Bureau of Prisons guidelines have required policies for transgender inmates that amount to conversion therapy, including short haircuts, the withdrawal of hormone treatment, and the use of psychiatric treatment and psychotropic medication instead.²

V. The Scale of It All

It is hard to take in all of this information without feeling that something fundamental has changed. It is not happening through one dramatic turning point, but through the steady drip of executive orders, laws, regulations, and court rulings.

2025 marked the sixth consecutive year with a record number of anti-trans bills introduced in the United States. In 2026, legislation is being considered in 42 states as well as at the national level that would further restrict the lives of transgender people.¹⁵

These laws do not operate in isolation. They build on one another. A transgender woman in Kansas carries a driver’s license that lists her as male. The law requires her to use the men’s restroom. Her medical care has been removed from covered benefits. Her complaint to her employer goes nowhere because the federal agency no longer processes it. And if she goes to a government office, she has to expect that someone might report her because her appearance does not match the marker on her ID.

This is not an abstract political scenario. This is the everyday reality of real people.

VI. What This Means, for All of Us

I am not writing this article from a distance. I am writing it out of my own life. As someone who knows what it means to pause for a moment in front of a restroom door and weigh the risks. As someone for whom stepping into public space is not something to take for granted.

To cis people, that may sound strange. But it is important to understand this: it is not about transgender people being overly sensitive or worrying too much.https://www.lgbtmap.org/ It is about the laws of these places turning them into second-class citizens. Systematically, legislatively, and with full intent.

The goal of this politics is not safety. It is invisibility.

And for many transgender people in the United States, invisibility is no longer a metaphor. It is official policy.

Anyone who wants to follow these developments further can turn to the Trans Legislation Tracker, which continuously documents all proposed and enacted laws in the United States. The Movement Advancement Project also provides detailed state-by-state maps of rights and restrictions.

Yours, Lizbeth

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Sources

¹ PBS NewsHour / Associated Press, 7. April 2026: "Trump administration stops enforcing protections for transgender students in several schools" pbs.org

² LGBTQ+ Bar Association, Executive Order Litigation Tracker (laufend aktualisiert) lgbtqbar.org

³ American College of Physicians, "Attacks on Gender-Affirming and Transgender Health Care", 2025 acponline.org

⁴ KFF, "President Trump's Executive Order on Gender Affirming Care" (laufend aktualisiert) kff.org

⁵ KFF, "Overview of President Trump's Executive Actions Impacting LGBTQ+ Health" (laufend aktualisiert) kff.org

⁶ KFF, "Policy Tracker: Youth Access to Gender Affirming Care and State Policy Restrictions" kff.org

⁷ Human Rights Campaign, "Map: Attacks on Gender Affirming Care by State", Juli 2025 hrc.org

⁸ Stateline / Pew, "Here's how state lawmakers are taking aim at transgender adults' health care", Februar 2025 stateline.org

⁹ KWCH Wichita, "'Bathroom Bill': Law impacting transgender Kansans takes effect", 26. Februar 2026 kwch.com

¹⁰ Movement Advancement Project, "Identity Document Laws and Policies" (laufend aktualisiert) lgbtmap.org

¹¹ ProPublica, "Wisconsin's Name-Change Law Raises Safety Risks for Transgender People", April 2025 propublica.org

¹² The Advocate, "21 states limit transgender people's bathroom use, with criminal penalties in three", 2026 advocate.com

¹³ Texas Tribune, "Gov. Abbott signs Texas 'bathroom bill'", August 2025 texastribune.org

¹⁴ Erin in the Morning, "Anti-Trans National Legal Risk Assessment Map", August 2025 erininthemorning.com

¹⁵ Trans Legislation Tracker, "2026 Anti-Trans Bills" (laufend aktualisiert) translegislation.com