Attacking Trans People’s Human Rights

April 1, 2026

Across the country, state and federal legislators are concocting new laws and policies aimed at dehumanizing trans people. From Kansas to Texas to D.C., we have seen a slew of hateful, baseless attacks on trans people’s rights to travel, to use public restrooms, to access mental and medical healthcare. We at the Woodhull Freedom Foundation are outraged. If you care about human rights, you should be outraged, too.

Kansas, along with four other states – Florida, Indiana, Tennessee, and Texas – prohibits trans people from changing the gender marker on their licenses. But Kansas is now the first state to law that retroactively invalidates birth certificates and driver’s licenses that do not reflect the bearer’s sex assigned at birth. An estimated 1,700 licenses were revoked, and hundreds of trans people have received letters informing them that their licenses are invalid. They may, per the letters, “be subject to additional penalties” if they continue to drive; they must surrender their now-invalid license and receive a new one with their assigned sex at birth. This attempt to address a nonexistent issue – people using an ID that accurately reflects their gender identity – creates significant problems for trans people, who will be more vulnerable to humiliation, harassment, and violence. Or, as Darren Rosenblum writes, the law is “a model of what [a] government should not do: unconscionable cruelty and complexity, for no public purpose whatsoever.”

Kansan legislators’ unconscionable cruelty does not stop there. In addition to limiting trans people’s access to travel, legislators also wish to limit their access to bathrooms. Senate Bill 244, which would ban transgender people “from using restrooms and facilities that match who they are.” This is a vicious attempt to address a nonexistent issue. As we at Woodhull have reported time and time again, trans people are not a threat to public safety. Rather, these bathroom bills endanger trans people. In the words of Woodhull’s President and CEO, Ricci Joy Levy, restricting access to public bathrooms “harms the health and rights of transgender individuals, including children,” including through causing medical issues such as urinary tract infections and increasing incidents of harassment against trans and cisgender individuals.

South of Kansas, Texans – who are already subject to similar ID and bathroom laws – are contending with a recent legal opinion by Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton interprets Senate Bill 14, a 2023 law that bans gender-transitioning medical care, to also include a ban on mental health care. Paxton’s opinion, while not legally binding, will likely be used by state agencies to create policy. It will also likely have a chilling effect on mental health providers’ 1st Amendment rights. Paxton ominously notes that violating the law “could result in a mental health provider losing public funding, such as Medicaid reimbursements, and losing their license to practice in Texas.” And of course, this ultimately imperils trans youth. According to Johnathan Gooch of Equality Texas, “In no uncertain terms, trans young people will die as a result.”

And then we have the Trump administration, which is certainly aligned with the draconian anti-trans efforts such as those in Kansas and Texas. The administration plans to cut federal funding to clinics providing healthcare for trans youth. Human rights advocates disagree with this approach, noting that children without medical intervention may be more likely to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria and have higher suicidality rates.

But as we at the Woodhull have reported repeatedly, advocates are fighting back. In February 2026, such activism took a powerful form: around 50 protestors with the Gender Liberation Movement and ACT UP blocked the entrance to the Department of Health and Human Services. As Raquel Willis, co-founder of the Gender Liberation Movement comments, among those protestors were affirming parents and grandparents. Around half of the protestors were arrested, caged in cells with limited access to food and water. Their demand? Stop limiting trans youth’s fundamental human right to healthcare.

We at Woodhull firmly believe that these protestors’ act of civil disobedience was a powerful showing of solidarity with trans people. We join their demand, along with the demands of advocates in Kansas, Texas, and beyond who staunchly oppose stripping trans people of their IDs, access to public bathrooms, and mental healthcare.