Quantitative Reasoning for Social Justice: An Active Learning Workbook

Throughout this chapter, you have explored and asked questions about a data set on anti-trans legislation in the US in recent years. This provides a broad overview of the landscape of anti-trans legislation, where it is happening, and the different aspects of civil rights that have been targeted. As we continue to grapple with what these means for us as global citizens and members of society, it’s important to know how to contribute towards the change we want to see in this realm.

An example of an anti-trans bill that was struck down after legal action and scrutiny is Tennessee’s SB-0001 from 2023. The legislators who supported the bill sought to restrict minors in Tennessee from accessing gender-affirming care. A word-chart of the bill is shown below. Much of the language that lawmakers used surrounded terms like "minors", "performed", and "medical procedure(s)" in reference to gender-affirming care for trans youth. The term "violation" was used to frame this care in opposition to the laws proposed in the bill.

A week before the law was slated to go into effect, it was struck down by a federal judge, in a case brought forth by a 15-year-old transgender girl and her family. In speaking about the effects of gender-affirming care, the girl’s mother said, "We have a confident, happy daughter now, who is free to be herself and she is thriving" [[5.6.1]. Judge Eli Richardson, in his decision on the case, repeatedly argued that "parents have a fundamental right to direct the medical care of their children" [5.6.2]. This argument highlights the role of parents in seeking basic medical care for transgender youth, and it also uses a commonplace term that was never found in the bill itself: "medical care." In contrast, the downstricken bill referred to medical "procedure(s)," a term chosen to connote experimental, invasive, and potentially harmful treatments.

CODE CHUNK NEEDED for students to play around with word chart creation

You can analyze a bill using word barcharts and go in many different directions. Above, we showed how tracking the broader history of a bill can add context to the word barchart and aid in interpreting how different terms were used. It also alludes to the roles people can play in fighting for justice against the anti-trans movement. Even beyond the plaintiffs and the judge—the case was brought forward by civil rights organizations; the court cited medical researchers who generated robust findings to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of gender-affirming care; the residents of Tennessee spoke during legislative hearings to generate discussions that forced lawmakers to explain their reasoning, most of which was debunked during the court case.