North Dakota Bill Would Require Employers Use Pronouns "Associated With Deoxyribonucleic Acid"

In the slew of anti-trans bills, some are truly vile and go beyond in how they target the community. This new bill is a stunning example.

Photo by Warren Umoh on Unsplash

North Dakota has been the site of many anti-trans bills in 2023. Already it has seen multiple bills proposed that would do things like ban transgender people from sports, ban transgender birth certificate updates, and medically detransition trans youth. One of these bills, the bill to ban trans birth certificate updates, even received a “do pass” from its committee hearing yesterday. It is clear that the state has set its sights on transgender people and may be the first state to pass anti-trans legislation in 2023, a year where many people are concerned that rights will be eroded in a historic fashion. It is in the states that are in a rush to pass anti-trans laws that we often find some of the worst proposals - often blatantly unconstitutional ones - and we are left to wonder if this is the direction that the far right wants to take the country in its treatment of transgender people. Now, a new bill has been proposed in North Dakota that would force any employer receiving state funding as well as all government employees to misgender transgender people based on “the individual’s deoxyribonucleic acid.”

Pronoun usage has come up in several bills this year and I anticipate that we will see bills around pronouns passed in at least one state. Most bills focus on the use of pronouns in schools and give teachers the right to misgender students. The Missouri “Teacher’s Bill Of Rights” bill, HB192, has a section that says teachers shall be free to use the legal name and pronoun of a student without fear of reprisal - a bill that would allow them to misgender trans students. Some states have ventured into compulsory pronouns, but only for students. An Arizona senator has proposed that teachers must use the pronouns that correspond to a student’s biological sex unless they get permission from a parent in writing. Oklahoma’s bill, SB30, would place similar restrictions on teachers. In Virginia, Glen Youngkin’s school board policy that he is attempting to force on all schools in the state require parental permission to gender a transgender student correctly, but have no such permission required to misgender a trans student. These double standards harm trans students as well as force teachers to participate in hurtful actions that may go against their own conscience.

Now, we have seen our first policy that targets employers and mandates that they partake in similar practices. North Dakota’s SB2199 would mandate that all employers in the state who receive state funding as well as all schools, institutions, state agencies, and offices misgender transgender people at large - not just students but all transgender people. The bill mandates that “words used to reference an individual’s sex, gender, gender identity, or gender expression mean the individual’s determined sex at birth, male or female.” It also mandates that this be determined through the individual’s deoxyribonucleic acid, their DNA. Those who violate will be charged by the state a fee of $1,500. Here is the text

Full text of SB2199 in North Dakota

This bill is especially perverse. It would be compelled speech for many employers in the state of North Dakota. It would force people to act against their conscience and would be a blatant violation of rights. Many individuals and corporations receive state funding. It would institutionalize the mass discrimination of transgender people across the state by hijacking Title 34 of the North Dakota Century Code which pertains to regulations around labor and employment.

On top of that, it would make outlandish demands of how employers and government agents should determine the gender of the people they interact with. The fact that the drafters of this bill include “determination established by deoxyribonucleic acid” shows that they have a fundamental misunderstanding of both biological sex and pronouns. We do not have “he” and “she” encoded into our DNA, and human biological sex is not binary. One would wonder how a bill like this would treat intersex people with nonstandard DNA profiles. Would people be forced to submit to mandatory DNA tests in order to determine what pronouns we should use for them? The implications of this bill are absurd.

The idea of “biological pronouns” is something that comes up sometimes in anti-trans spaces, and every time it does, transgender people point out that there is no such thing as a “biological pronoun.” Pronouns are human inventions and cultures have a variety of pronouns that are not necessarily attached to gender. This does not stop many states from trying to establish that such a thing exists. A Utah rep this year sent a letter to all Utah schools saying they should follow a school resource guide from Transgender Trend that mandates the use of “biological pronouns.” A federal judge in a free speech case cited “biological pronouns” in their decision-making. A Fox News story recently reported on a Tennessee bill that they state would allow teachers to use “biological pronouns.”

Bills like this would write discrimination into the law of North Dakota and would compel North Dakotans to harm their trans peers or risk facing fines of $1,500. There is no compelling state interest to force employers and government agents to misgender trans people. It is clear that freedom of speech is not what the far right desires in its treatment of transgender people - elimination of all legal recognition is the end goal and they are willing to go as far as to force it on transgender allies. This bill must be stopped - despite its blatant unconstitionality, the damage it can do should it pass would severe. The bill has three sponsors in the senate and three in the house: Senators Clemens, Vedaa, and Weston and Representatives K. Anderson, Schauer, and Tveit.