Arizona senator defends anti-trans legislation, despite pushback from the community it endangers

Bills controlling students’ pronouns and bathroom usage are making their rounds at the Arizona State Capitol for the fourth year in a row.

The two bills introduced by Sen. John Kavanagh, R—Fountain Hills, would prevent school staff from referring to a student by a name or pronoun that differs from their given name or biological sex without obtaining written permission from a parent, and prohibit trans students from using hotel rooms on school trips, locker rooms, and bathrooms that don’t match their biological sex.

Both proposals, Senate Bill 1002 and 1003, apply only to public and charter schools. SB1002 also prohibits a district or charter from requiring an employer contractor to address, identify or refer to a person by a pronoun other than the pronoun that aligns with that person’s biological sex, if doing so is contrary to their religious or moral convictions.

The pair were the official second and third bills that were filed ahead of this year’s legislative session and are essentially the same pieces of failed anti-trans legislation Kavanagh has unsuccessfully pushed for years.

Nationwide effort to discriminate

Nationally, Kavanagh’s bills fall in line with President Donald Trump’s recent attacks upon LGBTQ Americans.

Last month, President Trump issued an executive order prohibiting the use of federal money for gender-affirming care for people under the age of 19 — leading some hospitals across the country that accept Medicaid to pause the care they provide, even if the patient was using private health insurance.

One provider that followed suit is Phoenix Children’s Hospital, which secretly ended part of its gender-affirming care program for patients under 19 years old, according to reporting from LOOKOUT.

Efforts by the Trump administration to erase transgender Americans from society have not been limited to medical care, but have crept into every facet of government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed the State Department to freeze applications in the passport pipeline with “X” selected as the gender marker.

Gender bills not a voter priority

Kavanagh previously told The Copper Courier he is confident that he will be able to get the two policies on the ballot—bypassing Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ veto pen that he hasn’t been able to hurdle the past several years—and likely won’t this year, as the two bills aren’t written in a way that would have them sent to voters as a ballot proposition.

The two bills passed through committee with only Republican support.

In the bills’ Senate Education Committee hearing, Kavanagh said he brought the same or similar legislation back to give Democratic lawmakers “the opportunity to go back on the record as being more in line with the electorate,” and “the polls show the majority of people believe that there’s two sexes and they just don’t like parental rights being trampled.”

But, according to polling taken by the Human Rights Campaign, only 4% of voters named policies attacking trans people as an important issue in deciding who to support for president.

Not only is it not considered a priority, but voters are growing tired of the constant focus on anti-trans legislation and consider it political theatre. A majority of voters who participated in a 2023 Data for Progress Survey—including 55% of Republicans—think legislators introduce too many bills focused on “limiting the rights of transgender and gay people in America.”

According to stances left by Arizonans registered with the Request to Speak (RTS) system on SB1002 and SB1003, only 341 are for the two bills, while more than double, 706, are against them.

Situations that ‘just don’t happen’

In the committee hearing, Kavanagh described hypothetical situations where a medical professional could advise a parent against using a different name or pronoun that affirms the gender their child identifies with because it could be “psychologically harmful.”

State Sen. Catherine Miranda, D-Phoenix, pushed back on Kavanagh’s hypotheticals, and instead proposed putting more trust in the relationship between teachers, parents, and students.

“Our educators are very well connected to our families, and they have those relationships,” said Miranda. “I don’t think we need to legislate and force these conversations to be had.”

Despite Kavanagh’s claims of potential psychological damage, transgender and nonbinary young people who had access to gender-affirming clothing, gender-neutral bathrooms at school, and had their pronouns respected by the people they live with had lower rates of attempting suicide compared to those who did not, according to a 2024 survey by the Trevor Project.

While Kavanagh said he is “just trying to have some reasonable guardrails for the protection of children,” and “advocate for the rights of parents,” LGBTQ advocates have consistently spoken in opposition of the bills and even met with Kavanagh in person, only to be met with hostility and disbelief, according to The Copper Courier’s previous reporting.

Sandy Johnson, clergy with the United Methodist Church and mother of a transgender daughter, shared a photo of her daughter with legislators on the education committee, and emphasized how important it is for a child questioning their gender identity to “try on different pronouns [and] different names,” even before telling their parents.

“It’s a pronoun, it’s not surgery…it’s not anything except a pronoun,” Johnson said. “It’s not illegal, they’re not doing drugs, they’re just trying something on, something they already feel deeply, and they may not have language for it.”

Putting the “gender police” in school bathrooms

The bill prohibiting trans students from using locker rooms, bathrooms, and other school facilities that don’t match their biological sex has been widely criticized by the LGBTQ community and its advocates for being rooted in a misconception of the situations the bills are aimed at preventing.

“We’re now putting them in a situation where they’re [forcing] a trans girl, who very much is a girl walking into a boy’s restroom. What we are arguing here is not happening. This environment has been created to scare people,” said Bridget Sharpe, Arizona state director of the Human Rights Campaign.

Kavanagh has repeatedly described the following hypothetical situation as reality: where a “14-year old female student standing next to a naked 18-year old biological male who identifies as a female in a school shower.” To date, there is no record of this scenario or anything similar happening in any Arizona school, and Kavanagh has yet to provide any evidence to prove its reality.

This is never a situation a transgender youth would voluntarily put themselves in, said Tami Staas, the executive director of Arizona Trans Youth and Parent Organization (AZTYPO) and a Mesa Public Schools teacher.

Every parent and their child that Staas has spoken to, whether as a teacher, or through AZTYPO, has expressed similar sentiments, she told The Copper Courier

“We just saw a grown man standing here talking about nine and ten year olds in the shower. It’s weird,” Sharpe said.

Not a single transgender youth or their parents were present in the committee hearing, due to a hostile environment at the state capitol—standing in stark contrast to past years’ hearings with packed public seating.