Several executive orders from President Donald Trump are trying to erase the existence of transgender people under federal law.
Even before Trump was elected again in November, legislators in more than two dozen states were pushing through anti-transgender policies.
That's motivated some families with LGBTQ+ children to consider moving to places like Massachusetts that prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.
Sara Ballard and her family moved a few weeks ago to Northampton, Massachusetts, from South Carolina.
"We decided to move probably four days post-election,” Ballard said, explaining that all three of her children identify as LGBTQ+ in one way or another.
Her youngest son is transgender, Ballard said. He was well aware that South Carolina enacted a number of anti-transgender policies last spring — related to public schools and health care.
The morning after Donald Trump was elected in November, Ballard said her son crawled into her bed at 5:30, and asked if they could leave the country:
“He said, ‘Mom,’ with a tear streaming down his face, ‘Can we move to Canada?’ And my heart broke into a trillion pieces,” Ballard said.
She told him she understood his fear.
“‘I don't know that we can leave the country,’” Ballard said she told her son. “‘I don't know that that's feasible for our family, financially or otherwise. But we will look at options.’”
Ballard wanted to be somewhere her family would be safe, she said, and that had state anti-discrimination protections — whether it was in school or at work.
"We wanted to be somewhere that my kids could flourish," she said.
Home and the impact of anti-LGBTQ+ policies
LGBTQ+ resource organizations across the country have been hearing from families wanting to — or thinking about —relocating to states with protections for transgender people.
"Almost 40% of LGBTQ young people in [a] survey had considered moving to a different state, and 4% of them had already actually moved," said Logan Casey,
director of policy research at the Movement Advancement Project or MAP.
The survey published last month by MAP and The Trevor Project, asked 19,000 LGBTQ+ people, ages 13 to 24, about how state policies affect their well-being.
The relatively small number who actually move may not sound like a lot, Casey said, "but when you take current estimates of the actual size of the LGBTQ population at that age, that works out to more than a quarter-of-a-million LGBTQ people.”
Casey said that number is even more when you consider entire families may have moved.
MAP also creates Equality Maps, using real-time tracking of LGBTQ+ related state laws.
South Carolina, where Ballard's family moved away from, is in the absolute lowest category, Casey said, according to MAP's analysis.
“South Carolina has no explicit inclusion of sexual orientation or gender identity protections in the state's nondiscrimination law," Casey said. "So basically, it's legal under state law that a person could be fired or not hired because they're LGBTQ, that they could be denied housing."
In Massachusetts, Casey noted, LGBTQ+ people are explicitly included in the state's nondiscrimination laws. That’s in the context of public-school policies, gender on drivers’ licenses and health care protections.
But Casey and others said people shouldn't have to move away from their homes. And — for a variety of reasons — not everyone can.
Getting care in another state
Very few organizations have dedicated funds to help families move, said Emma Chinn, communications and policy manager at Campaign for Southern Equality based in Asheville, North Carolina.
"There is one group in Colorado [Trans Continental Pipeline] that has a fund specifically to help trans people relocate to that state," Chinn said.
She’s also heard of people starting GoFundMe campaigns to help with moving costs.
More commonly, Chinn said, there is grant money available for people who need to travel out-of-state for multiple medical appointments.
For many people, Chinn said, gender-affirming medical care is very expensive. Organizations like hers make recurring grants.
"For a family living in Houston, Texas, they have to travel 600 miles round trip, driving over 18 hours to get to a clinic that serves trans youth," she said.
At Chinn's organization, $500 grants are often requested multiple times by a single family.
"If you have a 10-year-old child who is just starting to go on a puberty blockers, thinking about the next eight years of traveling back and forth hundreds of miles," Chinn said.
For a lot of people, she said, moving to another state might make more sense, and some people might use the Southern Equality grant money to move.
"We don't restrict people from doing that at all," Chinn said. "But in our conversations as an organization, our mission is to make the south a livable place for LGBTQ people."
Ultimate priority
Still, parent Sara Ballard in Northampton said her children’s well-being is her ultimate priority.
Given incidents of violence against LGBTQ+ people around the U.S., Ballard said there was “danger in staying” in South Carolina, where they’re clearly not wanted.
“My own father asked, ‘Well, why don't you just stay here and if something bad happens, you can go?’ And my husband jumped right in and goes, ‘We're not waiting until something has to happen to our son before we make that decision,’" Ballard said.
The couple figured out how to make the move work. Ballard's husband owns his own business, which has him traveling all over the country regardless of where they live. And they tapped into their life savings, Ballard said.
Coming to Massachusetts meant leaving her aging parents behind in South Carolina. It also meant a higher cost of living. But for her children, Ballard said, it’s worth it.
"We're not looking for 'perfect,’” Ballard said. “We are just looking to reduce that underlying anxiety so that my kids can just be every like every boring other kid in the neighborhood! That's all they aspire to be! They just want to be normalized instead of othered."
Even in Massachusetts, there is a lot of uncertainty.
With the president’s new anti-transgender orders — and court challenges — it could be months or more before the impact is understood.
