The 2024-25 anti-trans bill wave, by the numbers

One caveat belongs up front: the counts vary, because trackers define and categorize bills differently. The two most cited sources, the ACLU and the Trans Legislation Tracker, point the same direction. The volume of state legislation targeting transgender people reached records in 2024 and rose again in 2025.

The Trans Legislation Tracker, a volunteer-run project, counted 701 anti-trans bills introduced across 44 states in 2024. By its tally, 51 of those passed in 17 states. The project described 2024 as the fifth consecutive record-breaking year.

For 2025, the same tracker reported a sharp escalation. It logged more than 900 bills under consideration that would negatively affect transgender and gender-nonconforming people, with legislation moving in nearly every state.

The ACLU, which tracks a broader category of anti-LGBTQ legislation, reported following 575 anti-LGBTQ state bills in 2025, most of them aimed at transgender people. The ACLU's passage figures run lower than the volunteer tracker's because its legal staff individually categorize each bill, rather than a difference in the underlying trend.

The bills cluster into recognizable categories.

Healthcare. Bans on gender-affirming care for minors spread to more than 20 states. The Supreme Court's June 2025 ruling in United States v. Skrmetti upheld Tennessee's version, removing the strongest federal constitutional challenge to those laws.

Schools. Legislation restricted transgender students' access to facilities and athletics, limited classroom discussion of gender identity, and in some states required staff to disclose a student's gender identity to parents.

Identity documents. Multiple states moved to bar transgender people from updating the sex marker on birth certificates and driver's licenses.

Bathrooms. The ACLU reported that 19 states now restrict transgender people from using bathrooms matching their gender identity in at least some government buildings, including K-12 schools.

A few points of caution are worth keeping in view. Introduced is not passed, and most bills die in committee. A bill counted in one category by one tracker may appear differently in another. Numbers also shift through a session as bills advance, fail, or get amended, so any figure is a snapshot tied to a date.

The direction, though, is not in dispute. Both trackers, using different methods, document a multi-year climb in the number of bills targeting transgender people and a rising share that become law. After Skrmetti, the healthcare bans in particular face a far steeper path to being struck down in federal court.

For transgender people in affected states, the abstraction of a bill count resolves into specifics: a teenager losing access to a prescription, a student barred from a restroom, an adult unable to correct a license. The trackers count the bills. The bills count the people.