When former state Sen. Dick Codey died earlier this month, the first thing Louise Walpin thought of was his unsuccessful plea on the Senate floor in 2010 to legalize gay marriage.
If legislators didn’t pass it, Codey warned, the world would look back and wonder: “What were they thinking? What were they afraid of?”
Walpin, an LGBTQ activist, thinks the same will happen with the push to protect health care for the transgender community. Legislation that would have codified access to it failed to pass in the waning weeks of the last legislative session, so Walpin and other advocates now are counting on Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill (D) to shepherd the bill into law. Sherrill will be sworn in Tuesday at noon.
“I look at this from a historical perspective. In LGBTQ rights, we didn’t get marriage equality right away. There has never been an LGBTQ thing that has gone through just smoothly, where everyone says, ‘This is great! We love the language, so we’re going to accept it,’” Walpin said.
Sherrill didn’t say much on the campaign trail about this issue, other than offering broad statements of support for marginalized groups, including transgender people. Some in the community noticed.
Kathleen Gallinaro of Gloucester County has a son who socially transitioned at 13, began receiving testosterone at 16, and is now 19.
“The good in me wants to believe that she didn’t want to bring up something that has been so heavily politicized, because the bottom line is that people have politicized the lives of trans children and trans adults in a way that nobody should be reduced to. Human beings are not politics,” Gallinaro said.
Transgender people and their allies say the fight for protections remains more urgent than ever, as federal threats to the community escalate.
Congressional Republicans have tried to bar Medicaid coverage of all gender transition procedures, while the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority upheld a Tennessee law banning such care for minors. President Donald Trump’s administration has barred transgender people from serving in the military, declared genders are “not changeable,” and tried to block such care for minors, among other things. The federal threats have driven some New Jersey providers to end or scale back services for transgender people.
“They want all of us gone,” said Melissa Firstenberg, a transgender woman from Marlton. “It’s not about the children, for the people who would attack us. It never has been. It’s about their power. It’s about demonizing and dehumanizing a small portion of the population. We’ve just got to make sure that they’re not successful here in New Jersey.”
Sean Higgins, a Sherrill spokesman, told the New Jersey Monitor that Sherrill will keep a 2023 executive order in place in which outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy declared the denial of gender-affirming care a violation of anti-discrimination laws. Higgins said he would not comment on the health care bill because it is pending. Bill sponsor Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex) reintroduced it last week when the new legislative session began.
Jeannine Frisby LaRue, board chair for LGBTQ rights group Garden State Equality Action Fund, said she expects legislators to pass the bill by June — and Sherrill to sign it.
“If this bill takes a year to get to Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s desk, that’s not a win for us. That’s not a win,” LaRue said. “I spoke directly to Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill. She assured me that this is an issue that she cares about, and it’s a priority, and she said if the bill gets to her desk, she’s going to sign the bill.”
In New Jersey, threats to the transgender community have gone beyond health care.
The state has been in court since 2024 defending a state policy that advises school districts they can accept a student’s change in gender identity without notifying parents. Christin Heaps, the father challenging the guidance, has framed his fight as one of parental rights, while the state’s attorneys have centered students’ safety and rights in their arguments. Heaps sued the Delaware Valley Regional High School in Frenchtown for not alerting him in the fall of 2023 that his child, then a freshman, had changed their pronouns and name at school.
Heaps’ case took a big blow last week when a federal appeals court dismissed his request for an injunction that would have blocked districts from following the state guidance. Heaps and his family recently moved from Hunterdon County to Florida, according to a court filing. It’s unclear if he will continue to pursue any claim for damages against the district.
While that case may fizzle out, some LGBTQ advocates fear more New Jersey school districts could follow the lead of Colts Neck’s school board, which rejected the state guidance that prompted Heaps’ lawsuit and also passed a “parental bill of rights” policy in November. That policy requires school officials to notify parents of a change in their child’s pronouns or gender identity, which critics decry as “forced outing.” It also allows them to opt their child out of sex education and decline school counseling.
Despite those other battles, advocates agree the health care bill remains their top priority.
“When we look at inclusion and these other issues, these are battles that will need to be undertaken by our community and our allies,” Firstenberg said. “But first, we need to make sure that we have the right to exist, and that’s what this health care battle is about. At its very core, this is a question about, do trans people have the right to exist?”
The bill would codify Murphy’s executive order and shield patients and providers of gender-affirming and reproductive health care from civil and criminal liability; it defines the former as all health care, including medication, related to the treatment of gender dysphoria and gender incongruence. It has been stalled in the Statehouse since Ruiz introduced it in June 2024, even though it has widespread legislative support (nearly half of each chamber signed on as sponsors), amid disagreement among advocates and lawmakers about the bill’s verbiage.
Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-Middlesex), who controls what bills move in the lower chamber, told reporters last week that lawmakers and stakeholders were close to agreeing on the bill’s verbiage, but “complicated” legislation takes time.
“There’s lots of conversations and proposed languages that make drafts go back and forth, and sometimes, there’s loggerheads, and so it takes time to overcome those. It is alchemy. It’s not a pure science,” he said.
LaRue attributed some of the disagreement to how the bill would define gender-affirming care, with some advocates looking to avoid that phrase altogether over concerns it had become politicized. It’s a tricky balance, she said.
“I was the lead lobbyist on the Marriage Equality Act, and there were some folks who actually said to me, ‘I’ll never support the bill if the word marriage is in it.’ I’m like, well, excuse me, that’s the whole point of it,” LaRue said.
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