Legislators have sent
a spate of pro-LGBTQ and specifically trans-inclusive legislation to
Gov. JB Pritzker’s desk this month, sharpening Illinois’ contrast
against its neighbors as surrounding state legislatures move to add
restrictions on healthcare, bathroom access and school sports for
transgender and nonbinary residents.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb last month signed a law that bans minors from receiving hormone therapy or other forms of gender-affirming care. Missouri’s Republican attorney general imposed an order clapping tight restrictions
on gender-affirming care for youth and adults before the rules were
blocked by a local judge earlier this month. And Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed laws earlier this year
banning hormone therapies for trans minors and requiring transgender
students to use bathrooms corresponding to their sex assigned at birth.
“With this slate of bills passing … in
other states, it is incumbent on us not just to say that Illinois has
great laws on the books now that protect equality, diversity and dignity
of LGBTQ-plus folks,” said Michael Ziri, director of public policy for
the advocacy group Equality Illinois.
Equality Illinois last
week celebrated the Illinois General Assembly’s passage of a bill that
expands the potential for construction of gender-neutral bathrooms. The
bill drew attention when an opponent
declared on the Senate floor the legislation would “cause violence.”
Other bills requiring gender
inclusivity among state social workers, mandating LGBTQ-inclusive
“cultural competency” training for Illinois medical workers and
requiring state agencies to tally their trans and nonbinary employees
are also headed to the governor’s desk, plus others advocates say help
advance a pro-LGBTQ agenda.
However, one bill, allocating state
funding as an incentive for schools that teach inclusive sex education,
remains in the legislative hopper. Its steeper path demonstrates the
extra hurdles facing legislative efforts to provide more resources for
LGBTQ Illinoisans.
Gender-neutral bathrooms
Following up on a 2019 law that
requires all single-occupancy bathrooms in Illinois to be labeled as
gender-neutral, Rep. Katie Stuart (D-Edwardsville) and Sen. Celina
Villanueva (D-Chicago) introduced a bill
in January that allows businesses, universities and other building
owners to build multi-stall bathrooms without gender designations.
Although the bill does not mandate
construction of gender-neutral bathrooms anywhere, it spells out
requirements for anyone who does build such a bathroom, including that
stalls must be sealed with floor-to-ceiling doors, and each stall must
have its own waste basket. Urinals would not be allowed.
During a nearly 40-minute Senate
floor debate on Thursday, a series of Republicans rose to excoriate the
proposal. Sen. Andrew Chesney (R-Freeport) said the bill was “like
woke-ism on extremism,” and Sen. Jil Tracy (R-Quincy) said she does not
“want to go into a restroom where there’s a man next to me [while I’m]
washing my hands.”
“Do we really need this bill?” Tracy
said. She joined others who asked why the matter was worth legislators’
time when they were still waiting for a budget proposal from Democratic
leaders.
“It’s a great question,” Ziri said in an interview on Monday.
Ziri pointed to a 2015 survey
of nearly 28,000 transgender Americans, including nearly 1,100 in
Illinois. Nearly six in 10 said they had avoided using a public restroom
in the past year because they feared violence or harassment.
“If you have the opportunity to use a
restroom that is gender-inclusive, that is private, that is safe, it’s
better,” Ziri said. “You may not have those fears or concerns.”
The Chicago-based Community Restroom
Access Project has been working for nearly a decade to advance the
proliferation of gender-neutral bathrooms. The group cheered in 2021
when a rewrite of the Chicago plumbing code allowed for all-gender multi-stall bathrooms
in the city. The group later joined forces with Chicago attorney Justin
Sia to write a bill that would apply to the whole state.
Advocates at Loyola University in 2019 approached Sia, then a third-year law student, to develop the policy.
“As I got to speak to more
transgender and gender non-conforming folks, I got to learn how much of a
stresser it can be for them just to use a public restroom,” Sia said.
“When some of these folks think about using the restroom, it would
prompt anxiety that they could get harassed or even attacked over the
way they look or present.”
The high stakes for personal safety
in bathrooms were laid bare on the Senate floor on Thursday, when Sen.
Neil Anderson (R-Moline) said he would “beat the living piss” out of any
man who entered a bathroom while it was being used by his 10-year-old
daughter.
“This is going to cause violence, and
it’s going to cause violence from dads like me,” Anderson said, drawing
cheers from his Republican colleagues.
The comment drew condemnation from
Democrats including Sen. Mike Simmons (D-Chicago), who asked the Senate
clerk to strike his words from the official record.
“It puts my communities in danger
— it puts LGBTQ people, and particularly transgender folks, in danger,”
Simmons, who is gay, said in an interview Friday of Anderson’s remark.
“If you have people stoking violence and stoking hatred, people could go
out there and do something stupid.”
The bill passed the Senate 35-10 on Thursday and cleared the House in a 63-41 vote Friday, sending it to Pritzker’s desk
State agency data collection
Simmons shepherded a handful of other
bills through the General Assembly this session aimed at making the
state more gender-inclusive, including a bill that, if signed by
Pritzker, will require all state agencies starting in July 2025 to
collect and report anonymized data on how many of their employees
self-identify as transgender or non-binary.
The bill followed a similar state law
championed by Simmons after his 2021 appointment that required agencies
to collect data on their employees’ sexual orientations and gender
identities.
“Gender non-conforming and non-binary
folks live in every district in the state,” Simmons said. “So it’s
important that they not be invisible — that they be reflected and
respected in the state’s hiring practices and our personnel, recruitment
and management practices.”
Simmons’ bill was passed by the full General Assembly earlier this month on a mostly party line vote.
Gender-inclusive language at DCFS
Simmons also joined Rep. Lakesia Collins (D-Chicago) to sponsor and pass a bill
spearheaded by ACLU of Illinois that replaces all gendered language in
the state’s child welfare and juvenile court rules. For example,
statutes would say “parent” instead of “mother” or father,” and the law
would refer to a “pregnant person” instead of a “pregnant woman.”
The bill also requires employees of
the state’s Department of Children and Family Services to record and
address parents and children in the system by their preferred pronouns.
In a statement released after the
General Assembly passed the bill this month, ACLU of Illinois director
of systems reform policy Nora-Collins Mandeville pointed to a 2021 auditor report that found shortcomings in the department’s treatment of LGBTQ youth in its care.
“Recognizing and affirming those
youth by using appropriate and inclusive language is a critical first
step to providing care to those for whom DCFS is responsible,”
Mandeville wrote in the May 4 statement. “Adopting gender inclusive
language promotes equity and respect for all people – a laudable goal
for our State.”
Cultural competency training for medical professionals
A coalition including Equality Illinois championed a bill
sponsored by Sen. Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago) and Rep. Dagmara Avilar
(D-Romeoville) requiring that “cultural competency training” be included
in any continuing education undergone by medical professionals in the
state.
The bill defines “cultural
competency” as including “information on sensitivity relating to and
best practices for providing affirming care to people in the person's
preferred language, people with disabilities, documented or undocumented
immigrants, people who are intersex, people living with HIV, and people
of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.”
Ziri said the legislation, whose language was attached to a larger bill
that passed the Senate in a 52-4 vote on Friday, is aimed at making it
easier for trans and gender non-conforming Illinoisans to find doctors
who recognize their identities and needs.
“We know from survey data that at
least a quarter of trans folks in Illinois don’t go to the doctor when
they need to, because they’re afraid of how they’ll be treated,” Ziri
said. “Folks are delaying medical care because of a lack of culturally
competent care.”
School grants for inclusive sex education
Illinois legislators in 2021 passed a law requiring public schools that choose to provide sex education to teach from a “comprehensive” curriculum that
touches on issues of consent, sexual orientation and gender identity
along with more traditional lessons on anatomy and physiology.
After many schools opted not to
implement the curriculum, complaining of limited resources, many of the
same advocates behind the 2021 bill drew up new legislation this year setting aside $20 million in state grants for any school that chooses to teach the course.
Amid intense negotiations around the
state’s 2023-24 budget, Equality Illinois and other advocates are
fighting to save the funding from the chopping block.
“Passing a law is super important,
but making sure it’s implemented with fidelity is also critical,” Ziri
said. “Part of that will involve identifying resources to do so,
including money.”
Pritzker has not explicitly promised to sign any of the bills into law, but advocates say they expect his support.
“The Governor looks forward to
reviewing these pieces of legislation when they reach his desk,”
spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh wrote in an email Monday. “He is a lifelong
supporter of human rights and is proud of his record supporting the
LGBTQ community in Illinois.”