Persecution of Transgender People in the United States
Special Report, October 2026
By Grace Harris
In the United States (US), conservative backlash against 2SLGBTQ+ rights movements is producing violent, systemic persecution of transgender Americans. Transphobic ideology and political scapegoating have fueled efforts to deny transgender identities, exclude trans people from public life, and to fully eradicate trans people demonstrate early warning signs of genocide.
Emboldened by the presidency of Donald Trump, right-wing political aggression targeting 2SLGBTQ+ people and trans people, in particular, comes after widespread social change in the wake of progressive social movements in the 20th and 21st centuries. Despite efforts at erasure, the overarching history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement remains deeply intertwined with the work of transgender activists and community leaders. Key milestones for social equality shaped the course of the past century, but recent political shifts have contributed to worsening hostile conditions. Transgender people have increasingly become the targets of political campaigns based on “anti-woke” platforms of conservative family values and bio-essentialist gender politics. Of particular importance to note is the simultaneous, overlapping dynamics of judicial and extrajudicial attacks on trans women of color. This persecution takes on multiple forms, encompassing legal rights restrictions, polarizing rhetoric, and violent hate crimes.
Political persecution of trans people in the US is best exemplified by the record-level numbers of anti-trans bills introduced and passed at the state and national levels. Multiple organizations have created legislative trackers that map locations and categorize the types of rights restrictions to show where the biggest risks are. The American Civil Liberties Union has identified 531 anti-LGBTQ bills, the majority of which target trans people, while the independent research group Trans Legislation Tracker has found 840 bills. Different metrics likely explain this discrepancy, but both sources indicate a severe problem. While many of the more extreme pieces of legislation have failed, such as Maryland's HB1399 proposing life imprisonment for gender-affirming care, at least 40 have been passed into law according to the ACLU and 63 according to the Trans Legislation Tracker. Most of these laws focus on healthcare access and rights restrictions in schools, attempting to stop trans people from being able to transition and erasing them from public space.
At the judicial level, the Supreme Court has been a site of great contestation. On June 30, a 6-3 decision upheld state bans on the participation of trans women in women’s sports teams, upholding similar rulings allowing healthcare bans for trans youth, permitting the dismissal of trans people from the military on the basis of identity, and requiring biological sex designations on passports and ID cards. The new right-wing composition of the Supreme Court, attributed to Trump’s appointment of three new conservative justices, has resulted in effective reversals of earlier decisions such as a 2020 ruling that extended Title VII civil rights protections to include discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. Together, these efforts across the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to deny and eradicate trans identities show active genocidal processes, including Stage 5: Organization and Stage 7: Preparation.
The structural violence of political and legal persecution is compounded by political propaganda and hateful rhetoric that constructs trans people as a violent, dangerous Other. In a recent counterterrorism strategy released by the Trump administration, officials identified “extremist transgender ideology” as a national security threat. This rhetoric frames trans people in opposition to the idealized gender roles promoted under right-wing ideology. Hate speech and transphobic rhetoric have even directly contributed to waves of violence targeting transgender people. This pattern exemplifies the processes of Stage 4: Dehumanization and contributes to further divisiveness through Stage 6: Polarization.
Direct interpersonal violence, most often seen in the form of hate crimes, may be the most overt element of transphobic persecution in the US. Since 2013, the Human Rights Campaign has recorded 399 murders of transgender and gender non-conforming people, including 27 in the past year. As the data shows, this oppression is compounded by intersecting identities, making transgender women of color the most vulnerable to violence. Overwhelmingly, transgender women of color face disproportionate levels of persecution: 70% of victims were people of color, 82% were transgender women, and 59% were Black transgender women. Global data reflects these patterns as well. Furthermore, these figures are likely underreported due to incorrect or incomplete information and deliberate or accidental misgendering. More insidious forms of persecution in discriminatory laws and rising hostilities embolden these acts of direct violence. While individual attacks alone do not indicate genocide in general, they show a pattern of a widespread intent to destroy transgender communities when combined with political persecution, structural violence, and dehumanizing rhetoric. Thus, conditions have progressed to Stage 8: Persecution in the US.
The persecution of transgender people in the US is a sign of dangerous genocidal patterns in action. Drawing on the language of the Genocide Convention, genocide encompasses acts committed “with intent to destroy" by killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions to bring about destruction, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children to another group. Legal and extralegal efforts to restrict gender-affirming healthcare, criminalize existence, and ostracize trans people from public life constitute efforts to inflict these conditions of destruction. The specific focus on trans children and on preventing transition are measures aimed at the eradication of trans people. Failing eradication, the US seems bent upon forced assimilation of trans children by removing them from 2SLGBTQ+ and allied communities. Other organizations such as the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security have already issued red flag alerts that trace an escalation of hostilities under the Trump administration. This pattern clearly demonstrates intent to erase and deny identity and, thus, to bring about the destruction of the American transgender community. Legal means and structural violence seem to be the current weapons of choice as opposed to large-scale mass atrocities. But, as we know, these means are preparatory rather than the worst that can be attempted.
Due to the increase in dangerous rhetoric, numerous anti-trans bills at the local and national level, and escalation of structural violence to direct interpersonal violence and hate crimes, Genocide Watch considers the United States of America to be at Stage 3: Discrimination, Stage 4: Dehumanization, Stage 5: Organization, Stage 6: Polarization, Stage 7: Preparation, and Stage 8: Persecution.
Genocide Watch recommends:
States should pass laws protecting the rights of transgender Americans to receive necessary gender-affirming healthcare, participate equally in society, and live free from oppression.
International organizations should partner with and uplift transgender community leaders and LGBTQ+ activist organizations to support vulnerable populations.
An independent monitoring group should investigate hate crimes and violent incitement.
The international community should monitor conditions in the US for transgender Americans, particularly trans women of color, and enforce compliance with international human rights standards.
