2025 LEGISLATIVE UPDATE - a BANNER YEAR!
WoLF Legislative Report - 2025 Has Been An Unbelievable Year, and It’s Not Over
By Sharon Byrne, Executive Director, Women’s Liberation Front
When the Executive Orders rolled out in late January and early February to overturn all things ‘transgender’ in this country, we quietly breathed a sigh of relief. At last…a welcome turning in this long, ridiculous saga of assaulting women’s rights by erasing us and replacing us with men in dresses. An end in sight to young women and girls trying to disappear themselves out of rape culture by becoming ‘they / them’.
Within weeks, the orders were blocked in court, as we’ve been tracking here.
State legislatures across the United States quickly cranked up, hardening their respective stances with a slew of legislation. It was a tsunami of bills, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
As WoLF’s Executive Director, I realized we had to meet this moment. So I took the following actions:
Organized a group of solid women to go to DC to advocate for legislation to implement the Executive Orders and defend women’s rights.
Created a Legislative Advocacy Team at WoLF to tackle the plethora of bills erupting out of the state legislatures. We invited Sisters-In-Action and partner organizations like WDI and LGB Alliance to join the call.
We began tracking federal and state legislation, and some of our top Sisters-In-Action bravely stepped up to the plate to handle the onslaught of bills. The WoLF Legislative Advocacy team is composed of solid volunteers from California, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Texas, and a brilliant intern from New York. We focus on ALL WoLF policy areas: abolishing gender ideology, pornography, prostitution, surrogacy, securing our reproductive rights, and eradicating male violence against women and girls.
The women on the team are fierce and focused.
You are welcome to join us! We will train you to track legislation, advocate and submit testimony in state legislatures, and draft model legislation that can be adopted by other states.
Highlights: (and some of our supporters are stars in this story!)
State Legislative Session:
From one of our core WoLF Legislative Team volunteers:
“Of the 688 bills I've fielded, 413 were bills we supported, 199 were bills we opposed, and 76 were mixed (as in there may have been some good provisions mixed with some bad provisions, or the bill was ambiguous about how much it would really help girls and women.)
That's an overwhelming 2:1 ratio of bills we felt GOOD about this year!
Of those bills that made it to the end:
72 were wins! (good bills that were signed/bad bills that were vetoed)
ONLY 17 were losses (good bills that were vetoed/bad bills that were signed)
12 bills passed that we held a mixed position on.
An overwhelming 500 bills just died on their own.”
Testimony submitted by WoLF so far in 2025: 61 bills
Last year: 20 bills
Gender Identity and Reproductive Rights Legislation:
We saw unusual moves this year to force-team reproductive rights with gender identity, and we vigorously opposed these. Several state legislatures passed legislation to define men and women in law, which we supported, and one clever state tied this to banning sexual exploitation, which we roundly supported. Iowa removed ‘gender identity’ as a protected class and reinforced sex in law. We also saw a new maneuver: gender identity was scrubbed from a bill to better protect women’s reproductive rights.
Texas had an incredibly active legislative session this year, unusual for a state whose unpaid legislators meet only every two years, and recess by June. Multiple bills were introduced in Texas that we supported to eradicate gender identity, and one that we opposed on reproductive rights. Texas only allows Texas residents to submit positions on legislation, so five brave Texas women stepped up to provide testimony on behalf of WoLF.
TWO special sessions were then called after the regular legislative session closed. In the second special session, SB8 passed to define men and women into law, and our Texas supporters helped make that happen. Thank you! Governor Abbott signed the bill on September 22, 2025.
Breaking News From California: When Texas ratcheted up the fight against reproductive rights, California responded, prioritizing the shielding of mifepristone providers and removing providions . Texas passed HB7 in its second special session to weaponize citizens as bounty hunters to sue mifepristone providers for $100,000 each. The intent is to put abortion bill providers out of business by drowning them in litigation. This would effectively enact a national abortion ban from Texas. California provides the majority of mifepristone pills and telehealth services. California legislators pivoted quickly and passed AB260 to shield mifepristone providers.
In doing so, they shoved gender identity to the back of the line. AB260 originally contained provisions for protecting ‘gender-affirming care’ along with reproductive services. Responding to the threat of HB7 from Texas, California legislators prioritized women’s reproductive rights over gender identity by striking all mention of ‘gender affirming care’ out of the bill - a first. Read the full story here.
Huge thanks to the Northern California Terven who consistently were a big presence in Sacramento this year, fighting so many bad bills. You’re amazing!
Connecticut tried to float a ballot initiative for 2026 to force-team reproductive rights and gender identity as protected characteristics in the state’s constitution. New York did this last year. I endured a 12-hour committee hearing to give our testimony opposing the bill.
I am delighted to report the bill died in committee.
Colorado: Some of the worst bills we encountered this year: to remove children from their parents if they won’t affirm (vetoed in California), make ‘misgendering’ and ‘deadnaming’ (using one’s birth name instead of adopted new name to reflect their new ‘gender’) acts of discrimination under the state’s anti-discrimination laws. While the removal of parental rights didn’t go as planned, the legislation that passed was pretty awful in cementing ‘gender identity’ into Colorado law. Colorado also required gender and name changes to be allowed on death certificates.
Special shout out to partners Gays Against Groomers and LGB Courage Coalition for fighting these bills so valiantly.
Men in Women’s Prisons:
California - I drove 8 hours to Sacramento to support a bill that would have excluded men who are classified as sex offenders from transferring into the women’s prisons.
Yes, you read that right. There’s a reason we are suing California - they put men in women’s prisons. Even the ones that have raped and murdered women and children.
Amie Ichikawa, our fearless partner of WomenIIWomen, gave heartbreaking testimony. Women Are Real, SFTerfCentral, and other Northern California sister groups were there.
The bill was defeated in that committee hearing, to our immense dismay, by Senator Scott Wiener, who wrote and pushed the bill allowing men into women’s prisons. His argument? Gay men having sex in parks get put on the sex offender registry. So that’s not a legitimate reason to discriminate against a man seeking to enter a women’s prison, in his mind. The committee caved in to him. While our showing was strong, we encountered well-organized (and clearly well-funded) activists, some from organizations we’ve never heard of. They all had matching signs (not allowed in hearing rooms, but were mysteriously overlooked by the committee). They also had a nice tent setup on the Capitol lawn, with a free pizza lunch.
We appreciate Senator Shannon Grove for putting this bill forward, and are working with her team on a new one for 2026.
Nevada: I sent a request to Governor Lombardo requesting he veto a bill that would allow ‘transgender’ inmates to choose which prison they want to be housed in. I shared the awful experience from California. He vetoed the bill.
Washington: The state already allows men in women’s prisons and jails as a matter of policy. A terrific Washington supporter alerted us to a bill to regulate county sheriffs that contained the repeal of a code that requires men and women to be housed separately in jail.
It was a tiny line at the bottom of the bill.
We testified against the bill in committee, with Amie Ichikawa, and that line of code was removed from the bill.
Minnesota:
Representative Mary Franson introduced a modest bill to keep the sole women’s correctional facility in Minnesota for females only. I testified in the 6 hour hearing, where the ACLU pushed that their legal analysis required the defeat of this bill. The ‘non binary’ and some male legislators demonized the bill, and killed it. I wrote an op-ed about the seething misogyny of these legislators for the Duluth News Tribune.
Women’s Sports
There were many bills on women’s sports across the country. Protection for women’s sports passed in many of the Southern states, and died in California, predictably, even after Matt Walsh turned up at a committee hearing to testify in favor of it.
Nebraska - Senator Kathleen Kauth put forth LB89- the Stand With Women Act to protect girls’ sports. I called her. She’d been wondering where the feminists were, and was delighted we reached out to support her bill. It had a fairly rough journey through the legislative process, but was passed and signed into law by the governor in June.
Maryland: HB0156 - to restore fairness in girls sports. I testified here in favor of the bill in the Ways and Means Committee. The committee voted the bill was unfavorable, killing it.
A key case is coming before the Supreme Court of the United States that may settle this issue. Stay tuned - we filed a brief and will invite you to listen to the hearing.
Commercial Sexual Exploitation AND Gender Identity
North Carolina HB805. This bill started as a bill to protect against commercial sexual exploitation, titled "Prevent Sexual Exploitation of Women and Minors Act." It had excellent definitions of consent and coercion, and required purveyors of pornography to get informed, written consent with age-verification before publishing any pornographic image or video. The bill mandated removal of nonconsensual intimate images, including those generated by AI. It provided harsh financial penalties.
It also enjoyed widespread bi-partisan support.
Then, a Republican legislator added the following provisions to the bill:
Defined male and female sex into law
Prohibited ‘transgender surgeries’ and hormones in North Carolina prisons funded by taxpayers.
Extended the statute of limitations to 10 years to sue for medical malpractice for performing ‘gender transition’ surgeries on minors
The bill passed, and then was vetoed by Governor Shapiro in July. We learned the legislators planned to convene to override the veto, and asked our North Carolina supporters to reach out to their legislators to encourage them to override the veto. They did a great job!
This bill was a bold, new approach to legislation to solve some big problems for women’s rights, and we want to see more bills like this one.
Porn:
New Mexico: We backed their bill to implement age-verification for pornography. It was slaughtered in its first committee hearing. Advocates from LGBTQ groups, and NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) decried the bill, arguing that kids require access to online porn to learn about sex.
Begging the question…how have humans been able to reproduce in the last 2.5 million years of our existence on this planet without the help of online porn…but we digress.
Age-verification legislation passed in Missouri, Ohio, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Arizona, on its second attempt, as Governor Hobbs vetoed it last year.
These bills failed in Oregon, New York, Illinois, West Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada.
Only 14 states have failed to pass age- verification laws, surprisingly, given these laws tend to enjoy bi-partisan support.
Surrogacy:
Pennsylvania. Like California, the state puts out a ton of proposed legislation, with a 2 year cycle. The infamous Kitteh Mama is a stalwart volunteer on our WoLF Legislative Advocacy Team, and she tracks all Pennsylvania legislation. So many bills are coming through that we formed a Pennsylvania Legislative Task Force to fight the worst of the bills in a targeted approach. We also pushed back on a bad surrogacy bill that read as though written by Big Fertility, Inc. bolstering the surrogacy firn’s rights and the rights of those purchasing babies, while reducing the surrogate mother’s rights.
Male violence against women and girls.
The best legislation we’ve ever seen on this came out of Louisiana this year, a bi-partisan bill authored by Rep. Kaylee Dickerson and Senator Regina Ashford Barrow. The bill strengthened Louisiana’s commitment to end sex trafficking but also enumerated crimes of sexual violence against women and children, including domestic violence, buying sex, and pandering. It included possession of a child sex doll and child grooming online. When convicted of one of these crimes against women and children, the offender must pay restitution if so ordered AND a $2,000 fine that is put into a state-controlled survivors’ fund to be distributed as follows:
25% to domestic violence shelters
25% to child sexual assault survivor services
50% to rape crisis centers
We were so impressed with the bill that we hosted a Zoom call with Rep Dickerson and Louisiana’s Department of Human Trafficking. We invited representatives from other states to collaborate on getting similar legislation passed in their state, and Rep. Jill Cooper from Pennsylvania attended.
And now on to the feds:
Representatives introduced 62 bills affecting women’s rights. Most of these haven’t made it to a committee hearing.
Key victory: Take It Down Act, which was passed, after being attempted for 3 years, and signed by the President while WoLF was in DC. We thanked every representative we met with for voting for it. The bill requires the removal of non-consensual intimate images, even AI porn, on request of the person in the image. We congratulated Senator Cruz on the bill’s passage, as he pushed it forward with Senator Klobuchar as a bi-partisan bill.
Contact Your Congressional Representatives To Pass These Key Bills For Women’s Rights:
You helped send us to Washington, DC, to advocate for codifying the Executive Orders ending gender ideology into law. We request your help again in reaching out to your Congressional Representatives to move these bills forward!
Key Bills:
S.1147 - Defining Male and Female Act of 2025 - puts forth solid definitions of each sex.
H.R.1015 - The Prison Rape Prevention Act - requires males and females be housed separately in the US federal prison system.
H.R.3492 - Protect Children’s Innocence Act of 2025 - this bill bans genital mutilation surgeries, cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers for minors.
H.R.5050 - Safety and Opportunity for Girls Act of 2025 - codifies Title IX protections for girls into law.
H.R. 5483 - The Chloe Cole Act - prohibits physicians, clinics, and hospitals from participating in chemical or surgical mutilation of minors; establishes a private right of action allowing victims and their families to seek civil damages.
