In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s reelection, advocates for transgender people in Illinois are scrambling to strengthen the state protections they’ve created, while some trans Midwesterners consider moving to states with shield laws for safe harbor.
State Rep. Kelly Cassidy told the Sun-Times there has been a coalition effort of state lawmakers to protect trans and reproductive health care access since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked in 2022.
Now, they’re looking closely at Project 2025 — a conservative policy playbook created by the Heritage Foundation — and Trump policy proposals and “evaluating what further protections we can enact in the coming months,” a spokesperson for Gov. JB Pritzker said.
One gap the coalition identified is medical data privacy and the use of geolocators to track people who visit health care facilities, which Cassidy said she’s confident will be fixed before the fall legislative session ends.
“There’s a hole in that [legislative] shield, and that’s data privacy, so that’s the top priority,” Cassidy said.
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Protections for reproductive rights and gender-affirming care were enshrined in state law in January 2023, putting Illinois on the side of people who risk prosecution by traveling to the state for treatment and also protecting the licenses of Illinois doctors who provide care that’s illegal elsewhere. The Illinois Human Rights Act also protects against discrimination based on gender identity.
In July, the Legislature gave Illinois judges the tools to help people change their names and gender markers on out-of-state documents.
But many of the threats made by Agenda47, the Trump campaign’s outline for the next four years, and Project 2025 would undermine these by circumventing existing protections.
“If a national ban [on gender-affirming care] passed, that’s our worst-case scenario,” Cassidy told the Sun-Times on Friday. “None of our laws will matter.”
The documents outline plans to end civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ people, remove doctors who provide gender-affirming care from Medicare and Medicaid coverage, and withhold funds from schools that protect the rights of trans students, among other things.
The Office of Civil Rights should “issue a general statement of policy specifying that it will not enforce any prohibition on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination,” Project 2025 states. “Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.”
Cassidy said with immigration shield laws having stood up to legal challenges, she’s hopeful those protecting the queer community and reproductive rights will as well.
Camilla Taylor, Lambda Legal’s litigation director, said legal challenges from the federal government may be harder to fend off, but Illinois would have the upper hand thanks to previous Supreme Court decisions making withholding health care from trans people on the basis of their identity unconstitutional. She was concerned, however, that local law enforcement would be compelled to violate Illinois law on behalf of other states or the federal government.
“Law enforcement elsewhere may be weaponized, and they may seek to conscript our law enforcement agencies to do things that are not lawful here in Illinois,” Taylor said. “[But] we don’t see a lot of dramatic struggles because the laws are very clear.”
Taylor said the likeliest victims would be those who can’t afford to move or travel for care, along with those who rely on telemedicine or get medication through the mail. Cassidy has proposed a $500 tax credit for people and health care providers forced to leave states with laws limiting access to gender-affirming and reproductive care, but that has yet to make it out of committee.
Ed Yohnka, ACLU of Illinois’ director of communications and public policy, said it could be similar to how some sheriffs didn’t want to enforce the assault weapons ban, and he urged people to keep an eye on areas outside of Chicago.
“This election may provide a permission structure for some to believe they can override the law of the state of Illinois, and pick and choose which of those laws they follow because of the policy of the president,” Yohnka said.
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Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., have shield laws for gender-affirming care, though Minnesota and Illinois are the sole havens for displaced trans people in the Midwest.
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Sage Worden, a 25-year-old trans woman living in Wisconsin, said she had joked about leaving the country before the election, but when the results came in, the conversation turned serious.
She wants to move to Illinois in the next few months but said she may wait until the end of the school year so as not to switch her 5-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter’s school districts mid-year. She’s also concerned about being farther from family and the higher cost of living in Illinois, though she said it would be worth it.
“I don’t even have the money to [move], but with Wisconsin going red and the amount of Trump signs I see, it doesn’t feel like it’s a safe place anymore,” Worden said. “If it comes between finances or safety, I’m going to choose safety.”
Cassidy said she was inspired by the way Rogers Park residents responded to ICE raids in 2020, adding that she finds comfort in the fact that communities of people affected by Trump’s election have come together to fight before.
“We have to do the work to put those pieces back together and be there for each other,” Cassidy said. “I’m gonna be standing between ICE and my neighbors, and I know they’ll be standing between us and whatever comes for us.”