Equality Maps
Reflecting Forward: Learnings from the 2025 Legislative Sessions
Last week, MAP’s Director of Policy Research, Logan Casey, was a featured panelist at the Equality Federation’s annual Leadership Conference in Madison, Wisconsin.
Alongside leaders at Georgia Equality, One Iowa, Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE), and the Equality Federation, the presentation “Reflecting Forward: Insights from 2025 & Preparing for 2026 Legislative Session” included new MAP data and insights on LGBTQ-related bills introduced this year across the country.
This collaborative talk was an opportunity to both inform and learn from advocates, state leaders, national organizations, and others about how the LGBTQ policy landscape is evolving, and how to support on-the-ground changemakers in the fight for equality. In this blog, we highlight top-line findings and data visualizations from Logan’s portion of the presentation.
The Landscape
Logan began by assessing the damage brought on by this year’s state legislative sessions. According to MAP’s policy tracking, a record-breaking 700+ anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced.
However, despite this massive statistic, it’s important to note that only a small percentage (12%, or 90 bills total) became law across 26 states.
This means that, as of July 15, 88% of the anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in 2025 were defeated. This year’s success rate is roughly consistent with the last 15 years of data: on average, we defeat 92% of the anti-LGBTQ bills introduced each year.
Types of Bills and Number of Bills
Further analysis of the enacted laws shows how this year’s attacks deliberately target the transgender community, with:
- 73% targeting transgender people in general
- 41% targeting LGBTQ youth
- 12% targeting incarcerated people
Of the 26 states that passed anti-LGBTQ laws in 2025, Idaho, Montana, Arkansas, Texas, and Tennessee ranked the highest in terms of number of bills enacted.
The following chart details the major types of enacted anti-LGBTQ laws in 2025. The most prevalent types of laws this year were bathroom bans and transgender healthcare restrictions, followed by child welfare bills and DEI restrictions, religious exemptions, sports bans, and more.
Supporting the Work and Looking Forward
The presentation concluded with the Equality Federation discussing proactive bill trends, as well as state leaders in Iowa and Georgia sharing their inspiring case studies of community organizing and engagement with state representatives.
After Iowa repealed gender identity as a protected class across the state’s Civil Rights Code earlier this year, One Iowa successfully mobilized its constituents in a tremendous demonstration for transgender rights. In Georgia, where 13 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced, Georgia Equality was able to defeat several bills, including an expansion of a transgender youth healthcare ban (SB 30), a bill banning broad public funding of gender-affirming care (SB 39), and a broad ban on “sexually explicit conduct” (HB 671).
As we look to 2026 and beyond, presenters emphasized that we must continue to watch developments of key anti-LGBTQ policy proposals in states such as Missouri, where an anti-transgender proposal will be on the ballot in 2026, and Idaho, which had the most anti-LGBTQ bills enacted this year. Presenters also noted several ongoing trends warranting continued attention, including:
- legislation targeting public funding for transgender health care
- legislation targeting incarcerated people and settings
- combination bills and budget provisions, which can include multiple anti-LGBTQ attacks at once
- expanding attacks on transgender adults’ access to care
In reflecting on the presentation and this year’s work on anti-LGBTQ laws, Logan remarked:
“The presentation included a really great conversation with the attendees. We heard from our fellow state leaders in Georgia and Iowa, who did tremendous work against some awful bills this year. We gained new insight from their expertise and lessons learned, and we got to talk about how we continue the fight — how to better support LGBTQ people, their families, and our allies who show up to protest, to committee hearings, and so much more. This is collaboration. This is how we power the movement!”
