The political landscape in Texas has shifted further to the right as we head into the 2025 legislative session. This shift comes after a surge in political campaigns focusing on gender identity and transgender rights, issues that have become a primary focus for conservative lawmakers. LGBTQ rights advocates say the Texas Legislature, now more conservative than ever, shows no signs of slowing down.
A more aggressive conservative agenda?
In recent years, Republican lawmakers across the U.S. have introduced a wave of bills targeting the LGBTQ community, particularly transgender people. Florida’s controversial "Don’t Say Gay" bill, bans on gender-affirming care for minors, and laws restricting minors from attending drag shows are just a few examples.
Texas was no different, with lawmakers and state leaders at the forefront of some of the most aggressive policies targeting the rights of transgender people.
Matt Lamb, a political science professor at Texas Tech University, believes the focus on restricting LGBTQ rights in Texas will only intensify next year.
"Given how some of the more moderate Republican members lost in primaries this past spring, I imagine they're going to have a more aggressive conservative agenda in this upcoming session," Lamb said.
Focusing on LGBTQ rights helped fuel conservative voters to the polls, he said, not just in Texas but across the country. From the president-elect down to local politicians, transgender athletes, access to books that include LGBTQ characters and gender-affirming health care for minors permeated Republican messaging in campaigns at all levels.
"Largely, I imagine they are pursuing these sorts of pieces of legislation — or, if not legislation, then making this a big part of their rhetoric and their messaging — largely because it works," Lamb explained.
More anti-transgender legislation on the horizon
In 2023, Texas Republicans passed a series of bills restricting access to gender-affirming care for minors and limiting trans athletes' participation in college sports.
However, that hasn’t stopped the GOP lawmakers from filing even more bills targeting the transgender community. With two months before the 2025 legislative session kicks off, they have already proposed more than 30 anti-transgender bills.
Among them are measures to require children wishing to participate in sports to undergo chromosome tests, mandate parental consent before a child can join any club promoting gender identity and block people from using public restrooms that don't align with the sex listed on their birth certificates.
This isn’t the first time Texas lawmakers have attempted to pass a bathroom bill.
A similar effort failed to become law, thanks to the opposition of business leaders and law enforcement. But the fact that the issue remains a priority for conservative lawmakers continues to raise concerns among LGBTQ advocates.
Jonathan Gooch, a representative from LGBTQ rights group Equality Texas, said Republicans are focusing on a very small segment of the population. The Williams Institute at UCLA’s School of Law, which studies LGBTQ issues, estimates that only about 4% of the population in Texas identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.
"Take the bathroom bill, for example," Gooch said. "If a trans person needs to renew their driver’s license, they should be able to use the bathroom while they’re there. That shouldn’t be a problem."
Jonathan Saenz, president of the conservative group Texas Values, argues that these bills are a necessary response to what he sees as a radical leftward shift on transgender issues.
"I think the Democratic Party has gone too far or attached themselves [to] … what you could likely see is a response this legislative session to the pendulum swinging way too far to the other side, to the left, on transgender issues," Saenz said.
Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa told The Texas Newsroom something along the same lines after election results came out in November.
“[Democrats] can support transgender rights up and down all the categories where the issue comes up," Hinojosa said. "Or you can understand that there's certain things that we just go too far on, that a big bulk of our population does not support."
He later apologized and announced that he’d resign from his seat in March days after the comment.
The impact of 'hateful' legislation
Even if many of these bills do not ultimately pass, experts say they can still have a harmful impact on the LGBTQ community.
Lauren Gutterman, a professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas, warned that such legislation fosters more discrimination and violence against transgender people or people who are gender nonconforming, regardless of how they identify.
She believes the focus on the LGBTQ, and particularly the transgender, community is disproportionate to their size within the overall population.
Operators of LGBTQ helplines, like the Trevor Project, say calls spike when bills affecting the transgender community are debated.
"It's almost with each successive meeting of the legislature, the kind of hateful bills directed at the LGBTQ+ community just become more and more severe and punishing," Gutterman said.
"These bills are kind of punching down at an already vulnerable population.”