A Growing Number of Republican States Are Trying to Identify Trans Residents. That’s a Problem.

Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas are among those that have sought information on their state’s trans people. Indiana and Texas are actively making lists.

Indiana Governor Mike Braun (left) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (right) are both making a list of trans people in their states | Images: Wikimedia Commons

Back in February 2022, before most anti-trans laws had even been passed, Texas became the first state to gather information on its trans residents. Initially, the targets of this data collection were the parents of trans kids—who were branded “child abusers” as part of an effort to crack down on gender-affirming care for minors—but by the end of the year, it became quite apparent that Texas wasn’t just interested in monitoring the lives of trans kids. That December, it was revealed that the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton had attempted to compile a list of those who had updated the gender marker shown on their Texas ID over the last 2 years. Moreover, the following year, Paxton separately requested trans kids’ medical records from providers of gender-affirming care from multiple Texas hospitals and at least one hospital in another state.

It wasn’t just Texas either. In Missouri, former AG Andrew Bailey also sought trans kids’ medical records, kicking off an ongoing court battle. In Tennessee, AG Jonathan Skrmetti forced the Vanderbilt University Medical Center to hand over all trans patients’ medical records as part of an investigation into the use of state funds for gender-affirming care. And more recently, the Trump administration has subpoenaed a number of healthcare providers to provide it with a list of the patients under 19 who have received gender-affirming care.

So far, these attempts have received considerable press coverage, and with good reason: a government collecting medical records without patients’ consent is a massive breach of privacy. But when it comes to trans people, it’s not just medical records that are being gathered, because for the past few years, an increasing number of Republican states have been trying to identify trans residents—often doing so in ways that aren’t immediately apparent.

As mentioned, one such example of this is in Texas. When the state abruptly announced in August 2024 that it would no longer allow people to change the gender marker listed on their IDs, it instructed employees to report any instances of Texans attempting to make these changes to an internal email. According to The Texas Newsroom, the Texas Department of Public Safety has been using this information to make a list of trans Texans, one that currently has 110 names.

That said, Texas’ determination to weed out trans residents goes beyond what has been reported. In March, AG Ken Paxton issued an opinion asserting that gender marker changes on Texas-issued IDs have never been legal, and as such, “any unlawfully altered driver’s licenses must be corrected, immediately.” While it may not seem like it at first, this also requires the state to single out trans people. Going back to Paxton’s 2022 attempt to compile a list of those who changed their gender, this fact becomes more clear.

There, the request was denied after it was determined that, out of the 16,000+ gender marker changes, it was impossible to know which ones were changed for gender identity reasons and which ones were changed due to clerical error without performing an extensive manual search. But now that the DPS has been essentially ordered to revert any driver’s licenses that were changed via court order in the ~11 years that Texas allowed gender marker changes, Texas has two options for enforcement: perform an even more extensive manual search of all driver’s license gender changes and revert licenses that have already been issued, or alternatively, check every person who applies to ensure they never changed their gender marker.

It seems that the state had gone with the latter, as in a leaked internal email, it was revealed that employees have been instructed to check “the sex listed on the primary document presented upon original application that is already on file.” In other words, this means that employees must needlessly validate the sex of every applicant against the original application, something that wasn’t normally done prior to the policy change. This appears to hold true even after Paxton’s opinion, because as of right now, there are no known instances of Texas revoking and reissuing a trans person’s driver’s license.

However, the same can’t be said about Florida. This year alone, there have been at least three documented incidents of the state cancelling trans people’s driver’s licenses if they were ‘improperly changed’ by employees after a quiet rule shift in 2024 banning gender marker updates. According to letters sent by the FLHSMV to those who were affected by this policy, licenses are reverted if the state’s “quality assurance efforts” “determine that the sex identifier” has been “improperly changed.”

Because the state still allowed these licenses to be issued but revoked them after a few months, it can be inferred that these “quality assurance” reviews are performed routinely in order to ensure nobody slips through the cracks. Like discussed earlier, this, at the bare minimum, requires manual checks of all gender discrepancies, subjecting the records of both trans people and cis people who experienced clerical errors to extra scrutiny.

A handful of states are seeking out data on birth certificate amendments too. Since 2023, Kansas has denied birth certificate amendments to trans people, and unlike most of the other states that have implemented these restrictions, the state will also revert gender markers on future copies of amended birth certificates. Similar to Texas’ policy, this necessitates, at the very least, that a record’s amendment history be reviewed whenever someone—cis or trans—requests a copy in order to ensure the gender was never changed due to gender identity reasons.

In other words, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment is actively searching for trans people in its birth records. Although the current governor, Democrat Laura Kelly (who vetoed the 2023 bill that required birth certificates to list ‘biological sex’), will almost certainly do nothing with this information, this may change if the state elects a Republican to the governorship next November.

However, Indiana has been much more explicit. Back in March, Governor Mike Braun signed an executive order directing all state agencies to recognise ‘sex’ as being someone’s “immutable biological classification as either male or female,” and as a result, the state’s Department of Health issued guidance informing County Health Departments that it “will not process gender change requests for Indiana birth records.” But interestingly, because of the way Indiana’s vital records system is set up, counties also have the ability to separately amend birth certificates for those 18 or older, and in at least one county, local officials have stated they will continue amending gender markers when a court order is presented.

That said, even if counties do end up allowing these changes, they won’t be reflected in the statewide system. Moreover, county-level offices have also been instructed to continue submitting trans people’s amendment requests to the state. Like Texas’ DPS, the Indiana DOH is gathering trans people’s court orders and birth documents and leaving them in a centralised database despite the fact that these requests will never be honoured. And the state hasn’t said why. As such, like Texas, Indiana is also effectively making a list—a fact that has largely flown under the radar.

As Republicans clamp down harder on trans rights, it’s possible that more states will start collecting information on trans people. Right now, although the states weeding out residents haven’t publicly stated what they are using it for, these anti-trans policies have already affected many trans Americans. Countless have been forced to out themselves thanks to inaccurate IDs, been subjected to extra scrutiny due to mismatches between IDs and birth certificates, and recently, even been denied access to the bathroom.

Republicans haven’t faced nearly enough public backlash for these blatant attacks. Making lists isn’t just transphobic, it’s extraordinarily dangerous. If they’re able to continue doing it unimpeded, these lists will only get longer. And it’s not just an issue about trans people—it’s an issue about privacy for all Americans.

This needs to be called out for what it is: a fascist attempt to police a minority. At the end of the day, a government won’t make a list of people without a motive. Sure, they won’t say what they want the information for right now, but when that reason is finally revealed, it’ll be too late to stop it. But until that time comes, this outcome can still be prevented.