MAP’s new report, LGBTQ Policy Spotlight: Efforts to Ban Health Care For Transgender Youth, provides a deeper overview of the legislative efforts across the country to ban best practice medical care for transgender youth, the harmful impacts these bills could have, and what best practice medical care for transgender youth actually looks like.
Important Updates in the States Identity Documents Religious Exemptions Montana became the second state since 2015 to pass a Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which permits people, churches, non-profit organizations, and sometimes corporations to seek exemptions from state laws that burden their religious beliefs. The legislature rejected an amendment that would have ensured that local nondiscrimination ordinances in the state are upheld.
Update to Alaska's Equality Ranking Alaska’s state Human Rights Commission announced that, reflecting the ruling in Bostock, it is now illegal in Alaska to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, public accommodations, credit and financing, and “practices by the state or its political subdivisions” — which applies to adoption and foster care services, as well as to public education. This development moves Alaska from “low” to “fair” on our overall LGBTQ policy tally.
Advances in Local Communities to Prohibit Discrimination Local cities and communities continue to make advances in securing vital nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. Comprehensive nondiscrimination ordinances were passed in: Additionally, partial ordinances were passed in both Asheville and Buncombe County, North Carolina. Both ordinances include sexual orientation and gender identity in employment and public accommodations only, though they specify that the municipality will assist residents in filing complaints of housing discrimination with the state. Local communities have successfully worked to ban the discredited and harmful practice of conversion “therapy,” including: | 
