Last month, Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee signed into law a discriminatory bill to prevent transgender people from using restrooms aligning with their gender identity at any business or place of public accommodation.
A few days earlier, Governor Lee signed an anti-transgender student bathroom bill, too. These are the first bathroom bills to be enacted since North Carolina’s notorious HB2 in 2016.
Far from state legislative outliers, these new laws are the latest in a series of unprecedented legislative assaults aimed at trans people that have swept state houses this year, officially making 2021 the worst year for anti-L.G.B.T.Q.