The 2022 Legislative Session in Review

On This Page
  1. The Arizona Legislature
  2. LGBTQ+ Policy in the Legislature
    1. Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills Signed Into Law
    2. Successfully Amended Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills
    3. Failed Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills
  3. 2022 Session Calendar
  4. The Sine Die Report

The Arizona Legislature

Wherever decisions are being made in Arizona, it’s our job to make sure LGBTQ+ people are involved in that process. A key focus of our organization is the state legislature, where LGBTQ+ lives and experiences have become an unjust subject of discussion. You can learn more about the legislature and keep up with the current session on our guide to the legislature, and you can be an advocate for more equitable decision making by signing up for our volunteer team.

LGBTQ+ Policy in the 2022 Legislative Session

By sheer volume, 2022 was the worst year on record for anti-LGBTQ+ policy in state legislatures around the nation. Here in Arizona, we faced an onslaught of legislative attacks, from bills targeting kids and their support systems to book bans and preemptive restrictions on gender neutral identity documents. Some ideas that we’ve successfully rebuffed before, like a law banning trans girls from school sports, found success this year, and disturbing new proposals, like the criminalization of gender-affirming care, nearly made it into law.

Through organized, citizen-based advocacy, the vast majority of anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced this session never made it out of the legislature. In some cases, these were more draconian versions of bills that did pass: compared to SB 1138, SB 1130 would have banned gender-affirming care for both youth and vulnerable adults by classifying it as abuse and criminalizing providers, while SB 1046 (a trans student athlete ban like SB 1165) would have subjected cis and trans girls alike whose genders were questioned to invasive testing and genital inspections. To learn more about any of the bills listed below, visit azleg.gov and search by the bill number.

Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills Signed Into Law

Senate Bill 1138

Summary: Originally written as a total ban on gender-affirming care for youth. With a strike-everything amendment, the bill has been narrowed to a ban on gender-affirming surgery for youth, interfering with international standards of care created and maintained by medical experts.

Senate Bill 1165

Summary: Bans trans girls from girls sports in schools. A similar exclusion does not apply to boys sports.

Senate Bill 1399

Summary: Would permit discrimination in adoption and foster care services on the basis of religious preference, under the guise of protecting religious groups from discrimination.

Successfully Amended Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills

House Bill 2161

Summary: As originally written, would have expanded parental access to school and medical records in ways that could violate the privacy of minors, particularly LGBTQ+ children. Along with an initial requirement in the bill for teachers to out trans students to their parents, these concerns have been removed by a series of amendments.

House Bill 2495

Summary: Bans books and other materials with depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct. Originally included a blanket ban on “homosexuality,” but has been amended.

Failed Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills

Senate Bill 1045

Summary: Would ban gender-affirming care for youth and require school employees to out trans kids.

Senate Bill 1046

Summary: Would ban trans girls from girls sports in schools. Requires invasive testing and genital inspections for girls whose gender is questioned.

Senate Bill 1049

Summary: Introduces $5,000 penalties against schools for violations of the parent's bill of rights, the legal cornerstone of many anti-LGBTQ+ bills.

Senate Bill 1130

Summary: Defines gender affirming care for children and vulnerable adults as a form of abuse, criminalizing providers.

House Bill 2011

Summary: Targets GSA clubs in schools by introducing a parental opt-in requirement and other restrictions.

House Bill 2292

Summary: Mandates that Arizona birth certificates are only issued with M or F gender markers.

House Bill 2293

Summary: Stipulates that schools cannot require employees to respect a student’s pronouns or penalize them for misgendering students.

House Bill 2294

Summary: Would prevent state agencies like the MVD or vital records department from issuing documents with gender markers other than M or F.

House Bill 2314

Summary: Ban trans kids from school bathrooms, changing rooms, and other “multi-occupancy facilities” appropriate to their genders.

House Bill 2608

Summary: Originally written as a total ban on gender-affirming care for youth, it may be subject to a strike-everything amendment on an unrelated issue.

2022 Session Calendar

The Sine Die Report

Each year, the Arizona legislature meets from early January to Sine Die – the final day – often in late June, to sponsor, discuss, and pass into law or the public record hundreds of bills and resolutions. At Equality Arizona, we spend the majority of the legislative session keeping on top of the bills that are core to the challenges facing our community. Over the past decade, this has meant contending with an ever increasing number of bills targeting trans people and LGBTQ+ children, along with threats to our fundamental freedoms of speech, association, and bodily autonomy. One side effect of this is that we don’t often get to share the full picture of what goes on in the legislature; for all of the harm even one anti-LGBTQ+ bill can cause, the record numbers proposed this year still only make up a small percentage of the legislature’s total. So for that reason, we put together the Sine Die Report, a quantitative analysis of the content and output of the 2022 legislative session.