In 2017, Texas lawmakers endeavored to follow in North Carolina’s footprints by introducing Senate Bill 6, which if passed would have barred K-12 students from using school bathrooms that don’t align with their sex assigned at birth. In the aftermath of North Carolina’s bill becoming law, the NCAA announced that national championships would only be held in states where trans students are not discriminated against. In the first year of North Carolina’s law, the Associated Press estimated that the state lost out on more than 2,900 jobs and nearly $4 billion in business that ultimately put down roots elsewhere. Undeterred, Texas barreled ahead, pushing its legislation in both the regular session and a called special session to force the bill through. Thankfully, a coalition of trans Texans, educators, and the business community dug in their heels and were able to kill the legislation. Even the powerful and typically conservative-leaning Texas Association of Business publicly opposed the bill.
In the years since, the Texas Legislature has made transgender people–and specifically trans children–a focal point for their campaign of hate. Since 2017, lawmakers have considered and in some cases passed legislation banning gender-affirming care (S.B. 14), barring trans kids from K-12 and college sports (H.B. 25 and S.B. 15, respectively), and accusing parents that support their trans kids of child abuse (H.B. 42 and subsequent child welfare investigations at the direction of Gov. Greg Abbott). This legislation harms trans kids when it passes and it harms them even when it doesn’t. Qualitative analysis from the Trevor Project suggests that calls to their suicide hotline from trans and nonbinary youth increase when anti-LGBTQ laws are considered in Texas, with a 36% increase in 2021 calls compared to 2020 when the Legislature was not in session.
Stories abound of parents making the drastic decision to uproot their families’ lives and leave the state, all to keep their kids safe from Texas lawmakers. Take the Stanton family, who left Texas for Colorado after lawmakers in 2023 passed a ban on gender-affirming care, or the Crawford family, who left the state ahead of the 2023 session. Still, not everyone has the ability to leave. One family profiled by CNN in 2024 could not afford to lose the financial stability afforded by the husband’s Texas-based job, so he remained while the rest of the family moved elsewhere. When families are forced out by extremist policymaking, the parents leave the Texas workforce, the children leave Texas schools, and their communities feel the loss.
Extreme anti-LGBTQ policies create major hurdles for companies seeking to do business in Texas. Inclusive corporate leadership is increasingly at odds with the political landscape in Texas, and that gap comes at a cost. A 2018 Deloitte report showed that companies with more inclusive cultures were twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets and eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes. A 2024 survey of both LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ workers found that nearly 77% of respondents are reluctant to apply to jobs based in states with anti-LGBTQ legislation, meaning companies considering a move to Texas may find it harder to recruit the best talent.
Organizations like Texas Competes have sprung up to quell these fears and provide businesses a platform to affirm their support for pro-LGBTQ policies. But these efforts aren’t enough to salvage the tarnished reputation of a state that makes transphobia and homophobia the cornerstones of its policy agenda year after year. Businesses understand that corporate responsibility is an important part of building a brand that consumers want to engage with, and they know that hateful, extreme policies harm their ability to attract the best and brightest workers. Texas lawmakers have yet to take this lesson to heart.