Alabama Passes Anti-Trans Law That Could Formally Greenlight Sex-Based Segregation

Throughout U.S. history, the distinction between legal versus illegal sex segregation has often been arbitrary and capricious.

Alabama State capitol - Jim Bowen - Wikimedia Commons

“What is a Woman?” Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a bill on Feb. 18 trying to codify just that. Sponsored by Republican state Sen. April Weaver and Rep. Susan DuBose, the policy takes its name from a conservative film of the same title, which self-identifies as a documentary. It is also known as Senate Bill 79.

Legal scholars warn that SB 79 discriminates against trans and intersex people. The law erroneously states that “there are only two sexes,” that “the term ‘sex’ is objective and fixed,” and those with “intersex conditions are not [another] sex.” It enforces strict definitions of sex, as well as gendered words such as “man,” “woman,” “mother,” and “father.” These clauses strip trans, intersex and gender nonconforming people from certain legal protections from discrimination. It can also pave the way to restricting the parental rights of queer and same-sex couples with kids.

The law functionally legislates entire groups of people out of legal existence. Dori Miles, a licensed attorney and board member of the advocacy group Alabama Equality, eviscerated the bill, which she describes as both bad legal practice and bad science. “With incorrect science and misinformation about biology, [SB 79] seeks to establish the law in Alabama in a way that makes it impossible for people who do not fit into either definition of gender to legally manifest their gender identity.”

Miles was not the only critic to point out the bill’s biological shortcomings. “The bill requires the state to define man or woman based on whether you can produce sperm or ova; or whether you once could; or whether you might, or whether you hypothetically could,” writes Brian Lyman, editor of The Alabama Reflector. The necessary medical tests to ascertain as much at birth are rare. Gender assignments do not legally have to be performed by nor verified by a medical professional before filing for a birth certificate.

Most notable, however, may be the fact that SB 79 explicitly prohibits the state from restricting government-run “separate single-sex spaces or environments for males and females when biology, privacy, safety, or fairness are implicated,” which could in theory greenlight sex-based segregation.

See the following excerpt from the bill”:

The terms “privacy, safety or fairness” are not defined, although such sex-segregated spaces already exist in practice, such as men’s and women’s prisons. The law is written in a way that could give the government a broad brush with which to paint gendered lines. And throughout U.S. history, the distinction between legal versus illegal sex segregation has often been arbitrary and capricious.

“In this vicious desire to harm a small group of people, we’re allowing governments to separate men and women on the slightest pretext,” Lyman writes. “Ivey and the Alabama Legislature have opened the door to sex segregation.”

Kansas, Tennessee, Florida and Montana have also seen similar bills that attempt to legislate the definition of sex. Earlier this week, Montana’s iteration was struck down by the courts, which called it “intellectually and morally indefensible.” In Alabama’s case, the bill was rushed through the legislature with near-unprecedented speed.

The presence of these efforts across state lines is no coincidence. Many of them contain whole swarths taken verbatim, or near verbatim, from what anti-trans activists at Independent Women’s Voice call the “Women’s Bill of Rights.” The legal framework it proposes — in the form of ready-to-sign sample legislation for politicians — seeks to codify binary, immutable, legal standards of sex in the name of “women’s rights.” Proponents argue it mitigates sexual violence. There is no evidence to suggest trans inclusion and acceptance leads to an increase in sexual assault cases.

IWV also claims that sex segregation ensures conditions that are “separate but not inherently unequal.”

The group and its sister organizations maintain tight ties to far-right initiatives such as the Heritage Foundation. The former advised the latter in creating Project 2025, the playbook for the Trump Administration’s crusade against the “toxic normalization of transgenderism.”

These states follow the Trump Administration’s attempts to erase trans people under the eyes of the law. White House officials argue that there is only one scientific definition of sex, which is definitively determined “at conception,” or possibly “at birth,” depending on who you ask.