United States

While there has been significant progress on LGBTIQ equality and rights in recent years in the United States, anti-gender backlash and a conservative administration are seeking to reverse many of these gains while implementing new restrictions. 

The legal recognition of LGBTIQ people’s rights has largely been won through court decisions. The U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex intimacy nationally in 2003, and in 2015, it legalized same-sex marriage across the country. In November 2025, the Court declined to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. As of 2017, same-sex adoption is legal in every state. Federal law does not explicitly ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or sex characteristics. However, in 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia (2020) that the prohibition on sex discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extends to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Several federal agencies under previous administrations also interpreted existing protections in housing and health care to be inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity, but this is changing under the current administration.

Since President Donald Trump began his second presidential term in January 2025, curtailing the rights of sexual and gender minorities, especially trans, nonbinary, and intersex individuals, has been at the center of his agenda, both domestically and internationally, fulfilling his multi-million dollar electoral campaign against trans people’s rights in 2025. In his first month in office, Trump’s decision to freeze nearly all foreign aid abruptly ended over a decade of critical U.S. support for LGBTIQ organizations and human rights defenders across the globe. To justify this, the administration spread disinformation on the work of LGBTIQ groups that received U.S. funding. The funding cuts were accompanied by a flurry of executive actions that imposed a binary definition of sex at the federal level; terminated diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; restricted access to gender-affirming health care for persons under 19; banned transgender people from serving in the military; and prohibited federally funded schools from allowing transgender women and intersex athletes to compete. In January 2026, the U.S. State Department expanded the so-called Global Gag Rule—a policy blocking federal funding for organizations engaged in abortion advocacy or service provision—to bar recipients of foreign assistance from promoting “discriminatory equity ideology” and “gender ideology” and providing “sex-rejecting procedures.”

Public opinion about sexual and gender diversity is mixed. Although there have been more positive and diverse portrayals of people of queer experience in recent years, media representation can also perpetuate harmful stereotypes. There have been many openly LGBTQ government officials, but many politicians also routinely engage in hate speech against LGBTIQ communities. Due to the lack of comprehensive legal protections and intensifying anti-queer rhetoric, people of queer experience remain vulnerable to violence and discrimination. LGBTIQ people often face family rejection, bullying, and hate speech, and are more likely than non-LGBTIQ people to experience economic insecurity and homelessness. In 2025, “one of the most dangerous years on record for LGBTQ Americans,” GLAAD tracked 1,042 anti-queer incidents—including physical assault, threats of violence, vandalism, and arson attempts—a five percent increase from 2024. Trans women, particularly trans women of color, face high levels of violence and murder, including by police officers. These attacks are fueled by a hostile atmosphere promoted by far-right groups. In September 2025, two far-right groups close to the Trump administration launched an online campaign urging the Federal Bureau of Investigation to categorize “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism” as a domestic terror threat.

Legal protections for people of queer experience in the United States remain highly fragmented and increasingly shaped by state-level backlash. The Equality Act, which seeks to prohibit discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and intersex status at the national level, has been filed in every Congress since 2015 and has not yet passed into law. Most states lack comprehensive nondiscrimination protections—only 19 states have laws that explicitly prohibit discrimination in education, while 22 states have laws explicitly prohibiting employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In 2025, Iowa removed “gender identity” from its civil rights code, eliminating protections in employment and housing and banning changes to gender markers on official documents. Twenty-three states restrict conversion practices for minors, but no state has successfully enacted protections explicitly banning nonconsensual medical interventions or discrimination based on sex characteristics. 

At the same time, anti-LGBTIQ legislation has accelerated dramatically, targeting trans communities in particular. In 2025, more than 700 anti-LGBTQ bills were filed in all but one state (Vermont), up from 487 in 2024, with at least eight states adopting rigid “biological sex” definitions aligned with federal efforts under Donald Trump. As of February 2026, 27 states have banned transgender people’s participation in sports, and 21 have restricted their access to public bathrooms. Restrictions on minors’ access to gender-affirming care expanded from four states in 2022 to at least 27 by November 2025, affecting roughly half of all trans youth ages 13 to 17, while explicitly permitting nonconsensual surgeries on intersex infants, marking a significant regression in bodily autonomy. In June 2025, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, a decision that is expected to legitimize similar bans in other states. In December 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced proposals to prohibit hospitals receiving federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from providing gender-affirming care for minors.

Access to legal gender recognition is uneven. As of late 2025, only 14 states and two overseas U.S. territories—Northern Mariana Islands and Virgin Islands—allow changes to gender markers on birth certificates through an administrative process that does not involve medical requirements. In November 2025, the Supreme Court upheld a Trump administration policy requiring new passports to align with an individual’s sex assigned at birth and disallowing nonbinary “X” markers on U.S. passports. In February 2026, the state of Kansas enacted one of the harshest laws prohibiting legal gender recognition, which will invalidate identity documents listing any sex other than the one assigned at birth. These restrictions take away the right of transgender, nonbinary, and some intersex people to have identification that reflects who they are.