Equality Maps
LGBTQ Equality Maps Updates: August 2025
In this rapidly changing landscape, MAP’s LGBTQ Equality Maps provide a detailed snapshot of the current state of LGBTQ laws and policies in the United States. See below for a listing of state and local level policy changes, plus MAP’s bill tracking and policy research updates, as of August 25, 2025.
▸▸ State Policy Updates
Ongoing developments with gender marker changes on identity documents
In Kansas, residents’ ability to change the gender marker on their driver’s licenses remains contested. After a 2023 law was enacted defining “sex” throughout state law to enable discrimination against transgender people, the state’s attorney general successfully sued the state’s license-issuing agency to force them to stop issuing gender marker changes for transgender people — something the state had been permitting, without issue, since at least 2007.
This June, a Kansas appeals court ruled that gender marker changes on driver’s licenses should resume, and that the state’s attorney general had failed to prove any harm would be caused by allowing such gender marker changes. But despite the court ruling, the state’s attorney general instructed the state’s licensing agency to continue to refuse to process gender marker changes while he appeals the ruling and the litigation continues.
In Indiana, the state issued a proposed rule — not yet in effect — that would prevent people from changing the gender marker on their birth certificate. For justification, the administrative rule refers to a March executive order from the governor defining “sex” throughout state law in exclusionary and discriminatory ways. Public comments were accepted through July 18, with a tentative effective date in October 2025.
MAP will update the Equality Maps if and when either of these developments are in effect.
“Shield” or “refuge” laws protecting transgender health care
See our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.
- June 20: Delaware’s governor issued an executive order to protect both patients and providers of medically necessary care for transgender people. Delaware is now one of three states with a “shield” executive order that protects access to transgender health care.
Regulating gender to allow discrimination against transgender and nonbinary people
See our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.
In 2025 alone, eight states total have enacted a new law (7) or executive order (1) defining “sex” throughout state law. To date, 18 states total have such a policy, and more than one in four transgender people (28%) across the country live in these states.
- June 20: Texas became the 16th state with a law or executive order defining “sex” throughout state law.
- June 30: Ohio became the 17th state to enact a law, after lawmakers used the state’s budget process to insert and force through multiple anti-LGBTQ provisions. While the governor vetoed some of these provisions, he did not veto this gender regulation/sex definition provision.
- July 29: North Carolina became the 18th state to enact a law, following the legislature’s override of the governor’s veto.
“Don’t Say LGBTQ” curriculum censorship laws
See our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.
- June 20: Texas became the 12th state with a “Don’t Say LGBTQ” law. It applies to all grades pre-kindergarten through 12. The same bill also banned DEI-related programs and activities in schools, student groups about sexual orientation or gender identity (such as gay-straight alliances [GSAs]), and more. ACLU has already announced they will sue to challenge unconstitutional aspects of the bill.
Conversion “therapy” laws
See our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.
- July 2: In Virginia, state officials settled a lawsuit regarding its 2020 law protecting LGBTQ youth from conversion “therapy.” The state agreed to not enforce the law in cases of talk-based conversion practices, which effectively gutted the law, given that talk-based practices are the most commonly used type of conversion “therapy” today. To reflect this development, Virginia is now categorized as a state with a partial restriction on our Equality Map, because at least some forms of conversion practices remain prohibited under state law.
- July 8: The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled, after a multi-year battle between the governor and the legislature, that the state’s regulatory protections against conversion “therapy” can go into effect. Read more about this multi-year effort here.
Bans on medical care for transgender youth
See our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here, including a chronology and details on effective dates, exceptions, lawsuits, and more.
- July 17: Puerto Rico became the first U.S. territory — joining 27 U.S. states — to ban medically necessary care for transgender youth. Unlike other state bans, Puerto Rico’s law explicitly applies up to age 21, making it the farthest-reaching such ban to date. The law also creates criminal penalties for medical providers, with up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
- August 1: New Hampshire expanded its existing ban on some forms of surgical care for transgender minors to now include both additional forms of surgical care and prescription medication for transgender youth. The expansions will not go into effect until January 1, 2026, and there is a grandfather clause allowing youth who begin prescription medication prior to January 1 to continue receiving that medical care.
Changes in MAP’s policy score categorizations
See our Overall, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity Policy Tally maps here, summarizing states’ scores across all the 50+ laws and policies we track.
- Virginia’s undermining of its own law against conversion “therapy” dropped the state to “Fair” on our Overall Tally.
▸▸ Local Policy Updates
Conversion “therapy” ordinances
See our Equality Map with local-level data here and state-by-state listings at each state’s profile.
- June 23: Columbia, South Carolina, repealed its ordinance protecting LGBTQ youth from the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion “therapy.” This repeal was effectively forced by a development in June, when the state enacted a first-of-its-kind law withholding state funds from any municipality that has a local-level law protecting minors from conversion “therapy.” Because the state’s capital, Columbia, was the only city in the state with these protections, this law effectively targeted Columbia, threatening to withhold nearly $4 million in state funding from the city unless they repealed their ordinance.
- August 19: Whitehall, Ohio, enacted a new ordinance protecting LGBTQ youth from conversion “therapy.” Whitehall is the 14th municipality in Ohio with such an ordinance.
Nondiscrimination ordinances
See our Equality Maps with local-level data here and state-by-state listings at each state’s profile.
- August 19: Whitehall, Ohio’s new ordinance protecting LGBTQ youth from conversion “therapy” also prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ people in employment, housing, and public accommodations. While the state lacks similar statewide protections, Whitehall is the 40th municipality in Ohio with fully inclusive, local-level nondiscrimination protections.
▸▸ LGBTQ Bill Tracking Updates
To continue highlighting trends across the country, included below are our current bill tracking counts for anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures.
Note: these counts may differ from other organizations or public counts for a variety of reasons, and this work is greatly facilitated by the work of other organizations including the ACLU, Trans Formations Project, and the Equality Federation and their member state groups.
As of August 7, 2025, MAP tracked over 715 anti-LGBTQ bills that were introduced across 49 states — i.e., every state but Vermont — in the 2024–2025 legislative sessions.
Click here to learn more about how the LGBTQ policy landscape has evolved over the last year and how to support on-the-ground changemakers in the fight for equality.
▸▸ MAP Policy Research Updates
In July, and in partnership with The Trevor Project, MAP published a new report, LGBTQ Policy Spotlight: Laws Protecting LGBTQ Youth From Conversion “Therapy.”
With the U.S. Supreme Court set to hear a case (Chiles v. Salazar) in late 2025 challenging the legality of laws protecting LGBTQ youth against these dangerous and discredited practices, this timely analysis details the history of these laws, the present and shifting landscape of both protective laws and counter-efforts to undermine these protections, and the importance of continuing to protect LGBTQ youth.
