Since the start of 2025, 869 bills regarding transgender people have been filed across 49 states and 37 bills are active at the national level, according to Trans Legislation Tracker, an independent research organization tracking bills that impact trans and gender-diverse people across the U.S.
This is a 23% increase in bills filed compared with the entire year of 2024.
Of those 869 bills presented at the state level, there are 12 active in the North Carolina Legislature.
As the number of bills regarding transgender people increases, organizations across North Carolina, such as the LGBTQ Center of Durham, are ramping up efforts to help and educate those who walk through its doors with support groups and assistance finding access to healthcare and legal resources.
One of the resources that the center offers is a quarterly name change clinic to help attendants gather resources needed to undergo the process.
Katie Jenifer, a volunteer at the LGBTQ Center of Durham and secretary of the Pauli Murray Bar Association, a network of LGBTQ+ legal professionals, has been volunteering at the clinic since 2017 and has been overseeing name change clinics across the state.
Jenifer said that since November 2024, she has seen an increase in clinic attendees.
“When we first started the Durham clinic in particular, we probably would get 20 or so clients every time,” Jenifer said. “Immediately following the election, our numbers skyrocketed. We were getting 50 people at a clinic. We were getting a lot of requests for more clinics.”
Jenifer said the increase in clinic attendees is coming from the Trump administration and legislation at the state level.
“People were so concerned about what was going to happen under the new administration,” Jenifer said. “There was a big surge right after the election, and then it kind of slowed down a little bit, and then another big surge right around the inauguration.”
Bo, who did not share his last name, is a recent masters program graduate who attended the LGBTQ Center of Durham’s name change clinic on May 3 and said his concerns over anti-trans legislation have been slowly growing since 2023.
“I know North Carolina, it’s been kind of an ongoing thing for a really long time, where people have, where trans rights have been targeted in the past,” Bo said. “It’s not necessarily a new thing that’s scary and worrying, but it’s definitely compounded over time.”
Bo said he hopes that other identity communities will take notice of what is happening to transgender people.
“It’s definitely something that people in other communities should be aware of,” Bo said. “I don’t think that it will stop with just trans people. It will be a continuous process of trying to take away the rights of stigmatized groups, of groups that have historically been discriminated against.”
Items within the 12 bills that are currently active in the North Carolina Legislature include NC H1000, where any clinics that provide transitioning procedures or hormones must report that procedure information to the state; NC H560, where abuse or neglect allegations can not be based upon a guardian’s choice to refer to a juvenile by their biological sex; and NC H791, titled the “Women’s Safety and Protection Act,” which Jenifer said recent clinic attendees are worried about.
“It attempts to define gender and sex, which is nearly impossible without leaving somebody out,” Jenifer said. “It tries to keep trans people from using the bathroom in public, in a bathroom that they feel safest in, and it tries to keep people from updating their state ID.”
NC H791 has currently passed its first reading in the North Carolina Legislature and has been referred to the Committee on Rules, Calendar and Operations of the House.
As of now, it is still possible for a citizen of North Carolina to change their name and their gender marker on their state ID, which Jenifer said most attendees don’t know.
“What I’ve been trying to encourage all the different organizations that I work with on these is to start to change our communications about it and our information about it, to say, ‘Hey, did you know you still can change your name and your gender marker on North Carolina State ID?’” Jenifer said.
Jenifer said some people are waiting until the Trump administration leaves office.
“In Asheville this weekend, I had a mom, she was coming with her minor child,” Jenifer said. “She emailed me the night before and said that her child decided just to wait out the current administration before he changed his name.”
According to Alix Adrian, the operations manager of the LGBTQ Center of Durham, there are requirements that must be met before a person can change their name in the state of North Carolina.
“The name change process in North Carolina is something that you go through the court system for if you are 18 and over in North Carolina,” Adrian said. “The law is that you can only change your name legally once.”
In addition to the age of the applicant, Adrian also said that petitioners will go through a background check.
“In order to do that, the court needs to know that you are not changing your name to get out of debt or some other obligation,” Adrian said. “And so that they ask you to present both a state and a federal background check in order to do those things, you do need to have fingerprints, and that’s why that’s part of our process.”
Adrian also said that the clinic assists attendees in informing offices, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, an attendee’s insurance company and their employer, that have their previous name about their name change. When a petitioner chooses to change their name in the state of North Carolina, the state will only inform North Carolina’s Vital Records.
In a room on the second floor of the Durham Public Library, Adrian and other volunteers waited for attendees to arrive. Inside the room, there was a fingerprint station where clinic attendees would fill out fingerprint cards for their federal background checks. Law school volunteers sat in a connecting room, talking applicants through the legal process of changing their name.
“When someone changes their name, it’s life-changing,” Adrian said.
While resources such as the LGBTQ Center of Durham are able to cover the cost of name changes, that is not something readily available across the state and the country.
“It’s a $120 court filing fee for adults or anybody 16 and up,” Jenifer said. “You have to have a state background check which is $14, a federal background check is $18, you have to have fingerprint cards. For both of those, that’s going to be $10 to $12 or more per card. And then if you have to order a certified copy of your birth certificate in addition to that, it can be anywhere from $25 to $60 depending on how you order it. And so the cost just keeps adding up, and it makes it really hard for people.”
Jenifer’s list of fees doesn’t include the cost of acquiring federal identification, such as a passport, which can cost up to $160, according to the U.S. Department of State.
According to the National Institute of Health in a study from 2020, transgender people experience higher rates of long-term housing insecurity and homelessness due to a lack of financial resources, social support and other risk factors. The NIH also found transgender women of color experienced significantly higher rates of homelessness than their white and transgender male counterparts.
The 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey, the only national transgender survey in the U.S., found that 30% of respondents had experienced homelessness in their lifetime. In addition to that, the USTS reported that North Carolina was one of the top 10 states respondents reported leaving.
“If you have somebody who’s poor, or you have somebody who’s LGBTQ, they’re more likely to be poor,” Jenifer said. “Additionally, if they’re Black or a person of color, they’re going to have that on top of them, like it’s, it’s just where it just piles up and it makes it almost impossible for somebody to get the basic documents.”
As Bo was making his way through the clinic, he said he was grateful to have a support system around him but recognized that not every transgender person has that.
“I’m in a fortunate position where the majority of my support systems are supported, but I know not everybody is in that position,” Bo said. “But I know for people who maybe don’t have an established support system with people who are supported, it would be, I would imagine, a lot more stressful.”
Bo said he was also grateful to go through this process without having to worry about the expenses.
“I know a lot of trans individuals may not have a stable financial situation,” Bo said. “There are a lot of people who are unhoused, unsheltered and people who may have been separated from their family because of their identity. And so having this type of resource where you can come in for free, I think, is really important.”
As Bo collected his legal documentation and prepared to take the next step to be legally recognized as who he truly is, he said he hopes those in the LGBTQ+ communities and other identity communities stay aware and support each other.
“Being defeatist and feeling like everything is hopeless is easy to feel when you stay current with everything,” Bo said. “But it’s important to stay aware, just so you can cope ahead and so you can kind of build up those support systems in advance, so if something bad does happen that does affect an individual, then they’ll already have something established so they don’t feel hopeless and like there’s no one there to support them.”