Today, on Transgender Day of Visibility, Governor Tony Evers vetoed five anti-trans bills. Following the veto ceremony, where the governor was joined by trans kids, their families, and LGBTQ+ and allied advocates from across Wisconsin, Fair Wisconsin’s Executive Director Abigail Swetz issued the following statement:
“Governor Evers has shown incredible leadership for LGBTQ+ rights over his terms as Wisconsin’s governor. We are so grateful for his unwavering support for our community, and especially our trans kids, here in Wisconsin.
Thank you, Governor Evers, for supporting trans kids and standing for LGBTQ+ rights. You have built your professional life on doing what is best for kids, and you made good on that commitment by vetoing five bills; with these vetoes, you protected health care for trans kids and made sure they know they belong and are safe in our schools and welcome on our teams. These bills were always about more than health care, or the makeup of a sports team, or the use of pronouns in a classroom – they were about excluding trans people from public life, and we cannot allow that, especially when our trans community is being attacked by so many levels of government. But today, you made your support of Wisconsin’s trans community visible and meaningful. Our trans kids and their families are facing so much hate right now, and you have consistently chosen to lead with love. Thank you.
The entire team here at Fair Wisconsin has another ‘thank you’ to share, and that is to our incredible LGBTQ+ and allied communities who turned up from every corner of our state to support our trans kids when these harmful bills received hearings in the legislature earlier this session. Thanks to your advocacy, those hearings included hour after hour of powerful testimony supporting our trans kids, and Fair Wisconsin was able to submit over 28,000 pages of written testimony from you to be included in the official bill records. We are so grateful to all of you who used your voices to speak truth to power, and we look forward to future sessions when harmful bills like these are not introduced and are, instead, replaced with hearings on pro-equality bills that will improve the lives of LGBTQ+ Wisconsinites.
Trans Wisconsinites are our family, our friends, and our neighbors. Our state is a better, richer, more vibrant place thanks to our trans community. As we celebrate trans visibility today, we also recommit; Fair Wisconsin is dedicated to building a state where trans visibility can not only be celebrated but can be protected and safe, where trans Wisconsinites’ right to live publicly and freely is guaranteed by law.”
