Trans Rights

The separation of church and state is key to making sure everyone, including transgender people, is treated equally under the law. This helps protect transgender individuals so they can live openly and without fear of discrimination in their workplaces, schools, health care, and public spaces. The separation of church and state protects everyone’s freedom to live as themselves and believe as they choose, so long as they don’t harm others. Put another way, it protects our freedom to be different. When Christian Nationalists try to take away freedoms from transgender people, they threaten everyone’s rights. As journalist Erin Reed, a speaker at the 2024 Summit for Religious Freedom, said, “Trans rights are all our rights.”

Some religious extremists and lawmakers misuse religious freedom to deny the rights of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-fluid people. These religious exemptions block access to health care, education, and other basic rights. For instance, in Oklahoma, a lawmaker tried to ban gender-affirming care for people younger than 26, naming the bill after a Bible verse that suggests doctors giving this care should be harmed.

Americans United works to make sure religious freedom is not abused to hurt others:

• The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide U.S. v. Skrmetti, an important trans-rights case, during the October 2024 – June 2025 term. AU joined a brief to the court arguing to overturn Tennessee’s ban on transgender health care. In other recent cases, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that LGBTQ+ people are protected by civil-rights laws that bar sex discrimination in the workplace. The court also let stand a ruling that public schools cannot refuse a student access to the bathroom that matches their gender identity or presentation.
• In AU lawsuits against the Trump-era Denial of Care Rule, health experts said inviting health care providers to deny care because of their religious beliefs would be especially harmful to transgender people, who already face significant barriers in accessing the health care they need. AU’s work against this harmful rule has paid off and it is nearly dead.
• AU has supported cases like Gavin Grimm’s, who challenged his high school’s bathroom policy, and fights to stop rules that let health care providers refuse to treat LGBTQ+ people based on religion.
• Christian Nationalists regularly target books with LGBTQ+ and especially trans themes and characters for book bans, often because those themes conflict with their personal religious beliefs. These bans are meant to isolate and alienate people who would otherwise find validation in such literature. AU has battled back against these bans.