Eight bills targeting transgender rights in North Dakota on governor’s desk

North Dakotans are awaiting word on whether Gov. Doug Burgum (R) will sign or veto a hefty package of bills that would restrict transgender rights, which was passed by the state Senate on Tuesday. The eight pieces of legislation would have wide-ranging effects on transgender minors and adults — from school sports to health care to workplace rights.

If Burgum signs the bills, medical professionals would be prohibited from providing gender-affirming care to minors, transgender girls and women wouldn’t be allowed to join girls’ sports teams from kindergarten through high school and college, and another would create a new rule for gender markers on birth certificates.

The North Dakota legislature also became the second in the nation — behind Tennessee — to pass a drag show ban, which would prohibit the performances in public places.

The number of bills passed by the North Dakota Senate this week, after already being approved by the state House, is the highest targeting transgender rights delivered to a governor in a single day this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union, which track such bills. The vote comes as Republicans nationwide accelerate a push to crack down on LGBTQ rights, sponsoring hundreds of new bills.

“This is not just one or two bad bills,” said Cody Schuler, advocacy manager for the ACLU of North Dakota. “This is a well-orchestrated slate of hate to push trans people out of public life.”

North Dakota Family Alliance, a state affiliate of Family Policy Alliance, a conservative Christian organization that acts as the lobbying arm of Focus on the Family, called the bills’ passage a “significant win.”

“It’s heartening to witness progress being made on issues that matter in our state,” the group said in a message posted Wednesday on its Facebook page. The group helped organize a coalition of conservative groups that lobbied in favor of the bills and led email campaigns to push them across the finish line.

Burgum has not commented publicly on the bills, and his office did not respond to requests for comment. But Burgum has in the past been skeptical of legal restrictions on transgender rights. In 2021, he vetoed a bill limiting transgender athletes’ participation in sports and last week he vetoed a bill that would have allowed state employees and teachers to refuse to use the preferred pronouns of transgender students and staff.

In his veto message last week, the governor said it would have put an undue burden on teachers and relegated them to be the “pronoun police.” After his veto, the legislature attempted, but failed, to override his decision.

However, on Monday, senators took language from the pronoun bill and put it into still-pending legislation that would restrict transgender students’ access to restrooms. To become law, that bill must either get approved by the House and governor or the House must approve it with a veto-proof majority.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle gave impassioned speeches earlier this week during a Senate debate on the eight bills and two other bills targeting LGBTQ rights that were amended and returned to the House for consideration.

Sen. Ryan Braunberger (D), the first openly gay state senator in North Dakota, said laws that limit LGBTQ rights and freedoms contributed to an attempt at taking his own life when he was younger.

“I was lucky to survive that suicide attempt — to be here — but many others have not and will not,” Braunberger said, adding that if the bills pass and become law then “kids like me across the state will feel like the world is against them. They’ll eventually feel like they can no longer go on.”

Sen. Janne Myrdal (R), spoke in support of the bills. Myrdal, is former director of the North Dakota chapter of Concerned Women for America, a conservative activist group that has lobbied against anti-discrimination policies for transgender people.

In her speech this week, Myrdal said claims that North Dakota would be punished if it passed a transgender sports ban are “simply not evidenced,” adding that more than a dozen states have enacted such laws and none have “lost federal funds. None of them have lost the ability to host NCAA tournaments.”

A variety of factors fueled this year’s bumper crop of anti-transgender bills in North Dakota, lawmakers, LGBTQ advocates and Christian activists said.

North Dakota holds its legislative sessions every other year, which means bills that were in development last year didn’t have a chance to be heard and voted on — adding urgency to pass bills now rather than waiting another two years.

“The question is, ‘Are you willing to live with what you have for two more years?’” said Mark Jorritsma, president of North Dakota Family Alliance.

The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group, agreed that the legislative schedule drove up the number of bills under consideration this year.

“This is their first time in session since 2021 and anti-LGBTQ+ legislators are playing catch-up, passing all of the types of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that have proliferated across the country over the last two years,” the group said in a statement.

Jorritsma said the number of bills prompted him this year to hire another lobbyist. Last session, he testified on behalf of two dozen bills, about 40 times, covering LGBTQ issues and abortion rights. This session, he and the new lobbyist testified about 50 bills for a total of 85 times.

“It doubled in one session,” he said.

Jorritsma and other conservative activists say the Biden administration’s support for LGBTQ rights has caused conservative North Dakotans to push lawmakers to resist federal policies.

Democrats and LGBTQ activists say a bigger factor is how state Republican lawmakers who were deemed not conservative enough on culture war issues lost seats last year. Former Republican state Sen. Jessica Bell felt that sting, losing her primary last June. “What I experienced in my district is representative of what is happening in the Republican Party across the nation,” Bell said in an interview.

She was widely credited with helping to save a coal-fired power plant from closing weeks earlier, rescuing at least 600 jobs in her district. However, two legislative moves in 2021 made her a target, including her decision to uphold Burgum’s veto of the transgender sports bill, as well as amendments she wrote for a anti-mask bill that made the law less restrictive. (The original bill would have prohibited local governments and businesses from issuing mask mandates, but the final bill only banned state government officials from doing so.)

“The minute she voted to sustain the governor’s veto, she had a target on her back,” the ACLU’s Schuler said. “You could hear rumblings in the halls of the Capitol early this legislative session from legislators feeling that they needed to vote a particular way, further to the right on these culture war issues, because they are afraid of losing their seats.”

Alice Crites contributed to this report.