It’s a really scary time for the trans community and this may not offer much comfort. And on the side of DON’T GIVE UP!, a lot of these bills are not being voted on by their state legislatures, let alone approved by either the House or the Senate of the state legislatures, let alone being approved by both.
And some of the bills, even if they do actually pass into law, are being struck down by the courts, even by conservative judges, because the bills are so obviously unconstitutional.
For example, the day before the nation’s first anti-drag law was set to go into effect in Tennessee, a federal judge temporarily blocked it for violating the First Amendment.
So here’s what you can do when you want to follow the status of one of these bills. For example, a bill that mentions if your child receives trans-affirming care, the child can be taken away from the parent.
- Type the phrase “if a child receives trans-affirming care in Florida, the child can be taken away from the parent” into Google, and it should pull up the bill number. By the way, a good indicator of an official website is to look for the website ending in .gov. These sites are reserved for governmental websites only. Meaning it’s an official website.
- Click on the result and it will take you to the official government page discussing the bill.
- Then look for the progress of the bill. You can see how a bill has been amended a number of times and whether it’s been voted on.
If a bill passes a state’s Senate and its House of Representatives, a judge can likely strike it down as a violation of due process based on previous cases. So there are still many checks in place.
That doesn’t mean these bills aren’t a huge problem, but if you do want to check the status of these bills, that’s one way you can do it.
You can also research what’s happening in the courts. You can Google court cases about a bill to follow the status of their constitutionality.
So DON’T GIVE UP! when you read the horrendous headlines about these bills. There’s still hope in striking them down.