Arizona governor vetoes bill seeking to erase trans folks from public life

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) vetoed 13 Republican bills on Tuesday, including one that LGBTQ+ advocates say would have erased transgender people from legal recognition in the state.

Senate Bill 1628, the so-called “Arizona Women’s Bill of Rights,” was introduced by state Sen. Sine Kerr (R) in February. Similar to laws introduced in other states like Indiana and Iowa, it would have removed the word “gender” from state law, replacing it with the word “sex,” which it defined strictly according to biology. The proposed law defined gendered terms like “boy,” “girl,” “man,” “woman,” “mother,” and “father” according to biological sex and would have banned trans people from single-sex environments like bathrooms, locker rooms, sports teams, and domestic violence shelters that do not align with the sex they were assigned at birth.

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Critics said the bill would have erased trans and nonbinary people from public life in Arizona.

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“This effort to erase trans people and try to force them to fit into boxes that they don’t fit into is totally unacceptable to me,” state Sen. Eva Burch (D) told the Arizona Senate Health and Human Services Committee in February. “I’m not afraid of trans people, I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to them if we keep treating them like this.”  

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona’s Hugo Polanco warned that S.B. 1628 would have also prevented trans people from obtaining legal documents like IDs that accurately reflect their gender identity.

“This bill would force transgender people to live a lie and put them at risk of harm by disclosing the sex they were assigned at birth on documents like drivers’ licenses, marriage licenses, school records and burial paperwork,” Polanco said in February. “All of us, including transgender people, need accurate and consistent identity documents that reflect who we are. That’s what IDs are for.” 

Arizona’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved the bill in a 31–28 vote along party lines earlier this month, KJZZ reported. The bill was then sent to Hobbs, who had previously said she opposed it.  

“As I have said time and again, I will not sign legislation that attacks Arizonans,” Hobbs said in a statement about her veto of SB 1628 earlier this week.

This is not the first time Hobbs has vetoed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. In April 2023, she vetoed S.B. 1005, which sought to allow parents to sue school districts for enforcing LGBTQ+ supportive policies. In May 2023, she vetoed S.B. 1001, which proposed requiring trans and nonbinary students to obtain written parental permission to use pronouns and names matching their gender identity. Last June, she vetoed two anti-LGBTQ+ bills, one that would have banned trans students from using the correct locker rooms and restrooms at school, and another that she described as “a thinly veiled effort to ban books.”

In June 2023, she also signed two executive orders allowing state employee health insurance plans to cover gender-affirming surgery and banning state agencies from promoting or funding so-called “conversion therapy.”