Across US, trans rights make election gains even as White House pushes back

Aleksandra Burger-Roy was genuinely shocked when she first heard about Question 3 on the Massachusetts ballot. The initiative asked voters if Massachusetts’ law preventing discrimination in public places should continue to include transgender people.

She’s been harassed and called gender-based slurs since she moved to Boston to study chemical engineering, but she generally considers it a safe place to be transgender, especially compared with the small town in Maine where she grew up.

“I continued to be shocked when the polls said that it’s close,” says Ms. Burger-Roy, a student at Northeastern University. She trusted Massachusetts voters to keep the law, but it concerns her that the group behind the ballot question was able to collect more than 50,000 signatures to put it on the ballot in the first place.

It’s been in many ways a remarkable past few years for transgender people, and much of American society seems to be inching toward inclusion. At least 20 states explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity – and on Election Day, 68 percent of Massachusetts residents chose to keep its civil rights protections in place. In Vermont, while Christine Hallquist lost, she made history as the first transgender candidate for governor nominated by a major party. From Virginia to California, more transgender candidates are being elected to statehouses and city councils.

The nation’s top businesses, too, have begun to make transgender-inclusive health care a standard part of the benefits they offer. Today more than 750 major US employers offer such coverage, compared with

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