Federal and State LGBTQ+ legislation update for 2025!

Time to call your legislators again!

Update on the status of Federal and CA State bills that affect the lives of the LGBTQ community.

FEDERAL

  • PRO-LGBTQ legislation
    • Equality Act (S.1503/H.R.15):This landmark bill seeks to amend existing civil rights laws to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It would cover areas like employment, housing, education, and public accommodations. “The nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that nationally, support for a bill like the Equality Act topped 75 percent, which includes a majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. The bill has been endorsed by more than 600 organizations, including civil rights, education, health care, and faith-based organizations, as well as hundreds of major corporations and business associations.” 
    • Senate Cosponsors: Padilla and Schiff – YES
    • House Cosponsors: Brownley and Carbajal – YES
    • Transgender Health Care Access Act (H.R.2487):This bill aims to ensure access to gender-affirming care for transgender individuals. It defines gender-affirming care broadly, encompassing various medical, behavioral, and supportive services related to the treatment of gender dysphoria. This includes improving medical education for gender-affirming care providers, expanding gender-affirming care at community health centers.
  • ANTI-LGBTQ legislation
    • Do No Harm in Medicaid Act (H.R.498):This bill proposes to prohibit federal Medicaid funding for gender transition procedures, including hormone therapy, for individuals under the age of 18, with specific exceptions for what they consider genetic disorders. The GOP tried to sneak this legislation into the similarly duplicitously named “Big, Beautiful Bill” but it was stripped out by the Senate parliamentarian. So it’s still lurking out there.

Action #1: Thank your federal legislators for supporting the LGBTQ community

Thanking your legislators for doing the right thing encourages them to continue, knowing that they have constituent support. Guaranteed that they are getting swamped by angry calls from the other side.

  • Minimal script to Rep. Brownley: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want to thank Congresswoman Brownley for cosponsoring the Equality Act and the Transgender Health Care Access Act.
  • Minimal script to Rep. Carbajal: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want to thank Congressman Carbajal for cosponsoring the Equality Act. I would like to remind him to add his name as a cosponsor of H.R.2487 – the Transgender Health Care Access Act.
  • Minimal script to our senators: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want to thank Senator [Padilla, Schiff] for their support of the Equality Act.

Contacts

  • Rep. Julia Brownley: email, (CA-26): DC (202) 225-5811, Oxnard (805) 379-1779, T.O. (805) 379-1779
  • or Rep. Salud Carbajal: email.(CA-24): DC (202) 225-3601, SB & Ventura: (805) 730-1710 SLO (805) 546-8348
  • Senator Adam Schiff: email, DC (202) 224-3121, LA (310) 914-7300, SF (415) 393-0707, SD (619) 231-9712, Fresno (559) 485-7430
  • and Senator Padilla: email, DC (202) 224-3553, LA (310) 231-4494, SAC (916) 448-2787, Fresno (559) 497-5109, SF (415) 981-9369, SD (619) 239-3884
  • Who is my representative/senator?: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

STATE

Action #2: Remind your state legislators to support these pro-LGBTQ legislation

Every one of Equality California’s 2025 legislative package to defend and expand LGBTQ+ rights has passed through their house of origin and moved on to the second. If they pass, they move onto Gov. Newsom’s desk. Yes. This is why it’s important to elect as many Dems as possible, but we just have to remind them that we’re watching.

Minimal script to your state legislators: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want [legislator’s name] to vote “YES” for every piece of Equality California’s 2025 legislative package legislation.
(If they want the bill numbers, here they are…)

Contacts 

  • State Senator Monique Limón (SD-21): email, SAC (916) 651-4021 SB (805) 965-0862, OX (805)988-1940 
  • State Senator Henry Stern (SD-27):email, SAC (916) 651-4027, Calabasas (818) 876-3352
  • State Assemblymember Steve Bennett: (CA-38): email, SAC (916) 319-2038, VTA (805) 485-4745
  • State Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin: (CA-42): email, SAC (916) 319-2042, TO ((805) 370-0542
  • Not your people? Which assemblymember/state senator is mine?: findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov.

Deeper Dive on CA bills

STATE – PRO-LGBTQ legislation – Status – “Close to the finish line”

See eqca.org for more information on each of these bills.

  • ID Documents
    • AB 1084 (Zbur): The Transgender Records Act: Streamlines and expedites the process for transgender and nonbinary Californians to obtain court orders for name and gender marker changes by requiring courts to process uncontested petitions within two weeks. It also mandates that amended birth and marriage certificates be issued within two weeks.
    • SB 59 (Wiener): The Transgender Privacy Act: Protects the privacy and safety of transgender and nonbinary Californians by making all court records related to name and gender marker changes confidential, reducing their risk of being outed and exposed to danger. It also prohibits these records from being posted publicly.
  • Shield Law Protections
    • AB 82 (Ward): Protects transgender and nonbinary Californians accessing essential healthcare and those seeking abortion and reproductive healthcare by limiting the sharing of sensitive patient data related to these services. The bill also expands safe-haven protections for patients, their families and medical professionals who offer this care to protect them from harassment, violence and hostile out-of-state actors.
    • AB 715 (Zbur): The California Attorney Protection Act: Safeguards attorneys from disciplinary action when providing legal services to patients, medical providers, and others seeking or offering healthcare services that are lawful in California but may be illegal in other states.
    • SB 497 (Wiener): Protects sensitive health data for transgender and nonbinary Californians by requiring warrants for law enforcement to access the state’s prescription drug database and establishes that knowingly sharing information from the database to unauthorized parties without a warrant is punishable as a misdemeanor. The bill also strengthens California’s shield laws by prohibiting health care providers from complying with subpoenas requiring the disclosure of sensitive medical information about transgender and nonbinary patients.
  • HIV Prevention
    • AB 554 (González): The PrEPARE Act: Strengthens existing protections requiring health plans and insurers to cover all HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medications—as long as they are FDA-approved and clinically effective—without patient cost sharing or other restrictions like prior authorization. The bill also ensures that local, community-based clinics can receive timely reimbursement for these drugs.
  • Safe Schools
    • AB 908 (Solache): Makes “implementation of supportive policies and initiatives to address LGBTQ+ pupil education and well-being” a state priority that local school districts must address as part of their Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs).
  • LGBTQ+ Families
    • SB 450 (Menjivar): Clarifies and reaffirms California’s longstanding jurisdiction for adoption proceedings, including confirmatory adoptions, for LGBTQ+ parents and others who either never lived in California or who no longer live here, so long as the child was born in the state.
  • Workplace Protections
    • SB 590 (Durazo): Expands protections for LGBTQ+ and other workers who need to take time off work to care for a loved one with a serious illness by updating the definition of “family member” for purposes of California’s Paid Family Leave Program (PFL). SB 590 will ensure that qualifying workers are able to receive PFL wage replacement benefits to care for a member of their chosen or extended family.
  • Housing and Homelessness
    • AB 678 (Lee): Requires the California Interagency Council on Homelessness—in partnership with LGBTQ+ community organizations and housing providers—to take proactive steps to ensure that state funded homelessness programs provide safe, inclusive and culturally competent services for unhoused LGBTQ+ Californians.

STATE – ANTI-LGBTQ legislation – Status – “Lurking”

Friday, June 6 was the deadline for bills to pass out of their house of origin. Bills that did not meet that deadline are not automatically “dead;” they become “two-year” bills and have a second opportunity to advance in early 2026, facing higher procedural hurdles.”

  • AB-1464 Housing preferences.(2025-2026) Existing law requires that an individual incarcerated by the department who is transgender, nonbinary, or intersex, regardless of anatomy, to be housed at a correctional facility designated for men or women based on the individual’s preference, except as specified for management or security concerns.
    • This bill removes a prisoner’s agency, sorting them by anatomy only, for those who’ve been convicted of, or has credible evidence that such prisoner has commited a wide variety of crimes against persons with opposite genders.
  • SB-311 Correctional facilities: women’s prisons. “This bill would require the department to establish a secure facility at each women’s prison to house transgender women, in order to protect the security needs of biological women, as specified. The bill would also prohibit certain inmates convicted of specified sexual offenses from being housed at a women’s prison.” This bill is attempting to add segregation and the term “biological women at birth” language to CA law.
  • AB-600 Pupil instruction: transgender concepts: opt out. “If any part of a school’s instruction in health conflicts with the religious training and beliefs of a parent or guardian of a pupil, existing law requires the pupil, upon written request of the parent or guardian, to be excused from the part of the instruction that conflicts with the religious training and beliefs.” This is all about transgender issues. Teachers/schools would have to provide alternate instruction for their little snowflakes, and can directly sue any such entity for violation of their primitive belief system. This is another far-right parental rights bill. The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus said California law already allows parents to opt their children out of specified curricula for religious or personal belies, but that Castillo’s opt out bill “disgustingly peddles false narratives.” What they want to get into CA law:
    • Parents and guardians have an integral part in their children’s education, and have a right to information about their child’s education, as provided in Section 51101 of the Education Code.
    • Parents’ having a fundamental right to “… the care, custody, and control of their children—is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by [the Supreme Court]” (Troxel v. Granville (2000) 530 U.S. 57, 65).
    • “‘It is cardinal [to the Supreme Court] that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder’” (Troxel v. Granville, supra, 530 U.S. 57 at 65–66, quoting Prince v. Massachusetts (1944) 321 U.S. 158, 166).
    • At the inception of the Fourteenth Amendment, “[the] concept of total parental control over children’s lives extended into the schools” (Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n. (2011) 564 U.S. 786, 830 (dis. opn. of Thomas, J.)).
    • It is well-established that parents have the right to direct the education of the children (Pierce v. Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary (1925) 268 U.S. 510, 534–35).
    • Parental rights extend beyond the threshold of the school door (Fields v. Palmdale School Dist. (PSD) (9th Cir. 2006) 447, F.3d. 1187, 1190–91, per curiam (deleting contrary language from Fields v. Palmdale School Dist. (9th Cir. 2005) 427 F.3d. 1197, 1207)).
    • Schools have been teaching pupils about gender identities and transgenderism, a belief system that requires an individual to believe that a human can have a mismatch between their brain and body; e.g., that a human could have been born in the wrong body.
    • Many parents do not believe that individuals have a gendered soul that is only known to the individual; many parents instead believe that there are only two sexes, and that sex is determined based upon an individual’s immutable characteristics of their reproductive system, as determined by anatomy and genetics at the time of birth, with females being an individual who has, had, will have, or would have had but for a congenital anomaly or intentional or unintentional disruption, a reproduction system that is designed to produce eggs, whether or not eggs are produced, and males beings an individual whose body has, had, will have, or would have had but for a congenital anomaly or intentional or unintentional disruption, a reproduction system that is designed to produce sperm, whether or not sperm is produced.
    • No human has changed sex.
    • The number of children and adolescents between 6 and 17 years of age, inclusive, that believe that they were born in the wrong body have increased markedly, with a three-fold increase over the span of five years between 2012 to 2017, inclusive, according to Reuters, and this increase correlates with the ever increasing and expanding instruction about gender identity and transgenderism in schools, both through sex educational curriculum and other instruction.
  • AB-579 Yaeli’s Law. “Yaeli’s Law, would clarify that certain actions, including, among other things, using a child’s legal name, referring to a child by a pronoun consistent with their sex as recorded at birth, or refusing to consent to, or provide, gender-affirming health care or gender-affirming mental health care, are not child abuse or neglect, do not constitute unjustifiable physical pain, mental suffering, or endangerment of health, and do not constitute serious emotional damage or a substantial risk factor of suffering serious emotional damage.” This bill would allow non-affirming parents or guardians who are investigated by a police department, sheriff’s department, or any agency against an individual or entity, can sue. It also would bar judges from considering whether a parent is gender-affirming when determining custody of a child. The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus said that to shielding non-affirming parents from child abuse allegations, the caucus said “we question how denying youth necessary mental health services approved by medical associations is moral and does not exacerbate mental suffering.”

STATE – ANTI-LGBTQ legislation – Status – “Dead”

(EdSource) “California Democrats on an Assembly committee blocked two bills Tuesday that would have banned transgender athletes from girls’ sports, locker rooms, bathrooms and dorms, after an emotional three-hour hearing that underscored the political divide in both the country and state.

  • Assembly Bill 89 would have required the California Interscholastic Federation to change its policies and prohibit an athlete who was male at birth from participating in a girls’ interscholastic sports team. 
  • Assembly Bill 844 would have changed state law to require college and K-12 students who play sports to play on the teams and use the facilities that align with the sex they were assigned at birth.”

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