Washington, DC—Today, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced a special session of the state’s legislature that will prioritize branding transgender children as second-class citizens. The move follows a contentious session in which the state’s officials debated several vicious attacks on Texas’ most vulnerable communities, from immigrants and women to religious minorities and transgender children. The Governor’s announcement is a shameful buckling to the most extreme faction of his party, and demonstrates the extent Texas will go to affirm discrimination as the law of the Lone Star State.
Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, offered this statement in response:
“Seemingly from the regular session’s start, several members of this legislature have made their mission to promote fear, misinformation and hatred toward the state’s most marginalized residents. Now, Governor Abbott wants to prolong this divisive session. His willingness to waste taxpayer dollars to put transgender children’s safety and dignity on the chopping block is grossly irresponsible, at best, and downright abhorrent at worst.
State-sponsored discrimination—against transgender children or anyone else—is horrific. And, as North Carolina’s government found out the hard way, anti-transgender legislation doesn’t just put transgender children in harm’s way: it can devastate a state’s economy, its reputation and the safety and security of its residents. Texas legislators now face the choice of allowing themselves to get swept up by the wave of intolerance that has already claimed too many of their colleagues, or they can stand up for all Texans and reject any more bills that write discrimination into law.”
