Advocates for Youth condemns the racist and anti-immigrant bills passed in Florida this week, including the new law barring Chinese citizens from purchasing land in Florida and a bill that makes helping an undocumented person a felony and forces hospitals to record the immigration status of patients.  These bills will deepen the harm Florida and other states continue to inflict on migrants. 

Advocates for Youth commends Maryland’s legislature and Governor Wes Moore for passing and signing into law bills which protect access to abortion and to gender-affirming care for transgender people.

Advocates condemns the Florida legislature for the passage of a series of anti-transgender bills.  We are deeply saddened by the trauma and discrimination Florida is working to inflict on gender expansive young people and their families.

Everyone has the right to be safe and comfortable in restrooms. This law will put transgender people in discomfort and even danger. 

Advocates for Youth condemns North Dakota’s “bathroom bill,”  now a law, the latest measure attacking transgender health, rights, and existence to pass a state legislature.  The bill will bar transgender people from using facilities consistent with their gender in public buildings, forcing transgender women to use men’s bathrooms and locker rooms and transgender men to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms. 

For over a week, Montana Representative Zooey Zephyr has not been permitted to speak in meetings of the Montana Legislature. As the Montana House discusses a bill that would ban gender affirming care and would allow schools to misgender children over their parents’ wishes, Representative Zephyr has asked to speak and been denied day after day. Rep. Zephyr’s fellow legislators on the Republican side have not only refused to allow her to speak but some have deliberately misgendered her.