Alabama seeks to follow Trump’s lead in defining male and female

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By Kim Chandler, John Hanna and Safiyah Riddle

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Katherine Bartle said she spent her years growing up in Alabama trying anything to “fix” herself and exist as a man. Eventually she realized it wasn’t possible.

“I am a woman. I assure you that this is not a costume, nor is it by my own choice,” Bartle, 24, of Huntsville, Alabama, told Alabama lawmakers this week as they debated legislation that would define her and other transgender women in Alabama as men based on the sex they were assigned at birth.

The Alabama legislation, which passed the Senate Thursday, would create legal definitions of male and female based on the reproductive organs at birth. At least nine other states have already enacted similar laws.

Now Alabama and a small but growing number of other GOP-led states are pushing to enact more laws this year following President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring there are two sexes and rejecting the idea that people can transition to another gender.

“That provides a framework for the states to be able to enact their own without fear of reprisals from the federal government,” said Nebraska state Sen. Kathleen Kauth, who is sponsoring a measure there.

Republican Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen issued an executive order to impose definitions for male and female, and he is backing Kauth’s bill. The measure also would restrict transgender people’s use of bathrooms and locker rooms. A committee hearing was set for Friday.

Several other GOP-led states are considering similar bills this year.

Trump’s move affects passports, federal prisons and federal funding. State laws affect state-controlled policies.

For example, after Kansas enacted its law in 2023, the state stopped allowing transgender people to change their birth certificates and driver’s licenses so that the listing for “sex” would match their gender identities. Even transgender residents who have had their gender identities reflected on their licenses face having the listing reversed if they have to renew their licenses.

Bills have been proposed in multiple states

Legislation defining male and female passed the Wyoming House last month, and similar proposals have been introduced in Arizona, Indiana, Missouri and South Carolina, according to groups that track measures rolling back transgender rights.

“It’s based on fundamental truths that are as old as the Book of Genesis and as reliable as the sun in the sky. Men are born men, women are born women and one can never become the other,” said Republican Sen. April Weaver, a sponsor of an Alabama proposal. She said a person “can identify as whoever you want to identify as, but this just puts into law what your sex is.”

The Alabama Senate passed the bill with a 26-5 vote, with all five Democrats voting against it. The bill will now move to the Alabama House of Representatives.

Alabama Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison, a Democrat, didn’t disagree with the definitions in the bill but questioned its purpose. She said the bill wouldn’t “change the perception about how people feel about themselves,” but instead intended “to change attitudes as people go in to get services, to have people looked at differently, to target, to isolate.”

“I believe people are going to be killed and die behind this,” Coleman-Madison said.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey promised to sign the bill if it reaches her desk.

The bills began popping up in statehouses several years ago, but they gained traction in the last two years.

Kauth said that even five years ago, the definition of male and female seemed fixed in people’s minds. Republicans often describe recognition of transgender people’s gender identities as an ideology being pushed by the political left.

“The intensity of this ideology and the push through society has been pretty extreme, so we need to actually push back on it,” Kauth said.

The American Medical Association and other mainstream medical groups say that extensive research shows that sex and gender are better understood as a spectrum than as an either/or definition. Strict definitions can also leave out a range of variations that include intersex people, who have physical traits that don’t fit typical definitions for male or female categories.

Conservatives pushing the bills often argue that states have an interest in protecting “women-only” spaces such in bathrooms, locker rooms and sport teams and prevent transgender women from accessing them. “It would prevent males who identify as women from claiming that they have an automatic right to access these specific women’s spaces. I believe we as women should be standing up to this,” Alabama’s Weaver said.

Trump boosts the idea that sex is unchangeable

Trump has boosted the idea that there are two unchangeable sexes in a series of executive orders that call for moving transgender women in federal prisons to men’s facilities, barring gender-marker changes on passports, ending federal funding for gender-affirming medical care for transgender people under 19, kicking transgender service members out of the military and removing transgender women and girls from women’s and girls’ sports competitions.

His policies are facing court challenges, with arguments that they are discriminatory and exceed the president’s authority. Some of the orders call on Congress to make laws and agencies to implement regulations –- actions that can take months or years.

“We deserve to be here,” trans people say

Trans people said the bills are an attempt to deny their existence or to capitalize on prejudice for political gain. Several hundred people marched to the Alabama Capitol and Statehouse Wednesday to protest the legislation and other bills that impact LGBTQ people.

“I’m tired of running from the opposition. I’m not going any damn where. You deserve to be here. We deserve to be here,” TC Caldwell told the crowd.

Bartle said she believes the bills are about an attempt to “exert control” over people.

“It’s not for the protection of women or anything of the sort,” she said.

Micah Saunders, a transgender man from Birmingham, Alabama, told lawmakers during a public hearing that they need to think about the implications. He said if the bill were to pass, it would force him as a trans man, who has a “beard and receding hairline,” to use the women’s facilities, and that any woman “not deemed feminine enough could be a target for harassment.”

“This bill will put Alabamians under the threat of violence and harassment. It solves no problems and creates new ones,” Saunders said.