The Arizona Legislature

On This Page
  1. Subscribe to Action Alerts
  2. Tracking Policy in the Legislature
    1. Anti-LGBTQ+ Referrals
    2. Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills
    3. Pro-LGBTQ+ Bills
    4. Youth Rights
    5. The Housing Crisis
    6. Reproductive Rights
  3. How the Legislature Runs
  4. How to Make Your Voice Heard
  5. The 2022 Legislative Session in Review
  6. Find Your State Legislators

Action Alerts

Subscribe to Legislative Updates

Our defining vision is for LGBTQ+ Arizonans to be fully involved and included in the civic and political functions of our state. On this page, you can find action alerts and policy updates on all the legislation affecting Arizona's LGBTQ+ communities. You can also sign up for action alert emails or subscribe to our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or with the RSS feed. We publish these guides as a resource to help LGBTQ+ Arizonans get informed and engaged in civic advocacy. For more information about the Arizona legislature, keep reading!

Tracking the Arizona Legislature

After an aggressive year for anti-LGBTQ+ policy, we're expecting 2023 to bring an escalation of those attacks. In 2022, reactionary lawmakers were able to pass bills excluding trans girls from school athletics and restricting access for gender-affirming care. This year it's likely that we'll see more efforts to limit opportunities for trans and nonbinary students in schools and new bills targeting LGBTQ+ culture and expression, including drag performances. However, there is hope for some pro-LGBTQ+ policies to find success this year, and we'll be tracking both categories here and in our newsletter.

Anti-LGBTQ+ Ballot Referrals

Senate Concurrent Resolution 1025

Status: failed to receive a committee hearing by the second deadline.

Summary: sponsored by Senator Wadsack, SCR 1025 would add the parental bill of rights to the Arizona Constitution. Currently in state statute under ARS 1-601 and 1-602, the parental bill of rights was established in 2010 through the lobbying efforts of the Center for Arizona Policy, an anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy group. It has been used as a legal framework for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation ever since. If passed by the legislature, it would be sent to the ballot in 2024.

Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills

Senate Bill 1001

Status: vetoed.

Summary: sponsored by Senator Kavanagh, SB 1001 makes it illegal for teachers and other school employees to respect the pronouns of a trans or non-binary student without written parental permission, and for students who do have parental consent, it prevents schools from requiring employees to use their correct pronouns.

Senate Bill 1005

Status: vetoed.

Summary: sponsored by Senator Kavanagh, SB 1005 bars courts from awarding damages to a government entity when sued for a violation of the parental bill of rights, unless the case was brought without justification or for the purpose of harassment. In practice, teachers and schools may feel pressure to avoid perfectly legal ways of supporting the LGBTQ+ community out of fear that it may expose them to legal action.

Senate Bill 1026

Status: vetoed.

Summary: sponsored by Senator Kavanagh, SB 1026 prohibits state money from being used for “drag shows targeting minors” which it defines so broadly that a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night could be penalized under this law. With an amendment, it also bans the use of private money to sponsor drag performances in places like public libraries, targeting inclusive early literacy programs like drag story time.

Senate Bill 1028

Status: vetoed.

Summary: sponsored by Senator Kern, SB 1028 initially included drag performers and “male or female impersonators” in a definition of “adult cabaret performances” that it bans from public places and other locations where they “could be viewed by a minor.” Anyone charged under the law would face a misdemeanor, escalating to a felony after the first charge. With amendments, the bill is more narrowly tailored to sexually explicit performances and has removed all references to drag.

Senate Bill 1030

Status: vetoed.

Summary: sponsored by Senator Kern, SB 1030 initially classified drag performers as “adult oriented business” using the same dangerously broad definition of drag performers as SB 1026. With an amendment, it strikes the definition and all other references to drag.

Senate Bill 1040

Status: vetoed.

Summary: sponsored by Senator Kavanagh, SB 1040 bans trans students and teachers from using school restrooms that match their gender identity and allows people to sue schools if they share a restroom or similar school facility with a trans person.

Senate Bill 1694

Status: failed in its final House vote.

Summary: sponsored by Senator Hoffman, SB 1694 bans diversity, equity, and inclusion programs for public entities. The bill also prohibits any public entity from acknowledging the identities and existence of trans people.

Senate Bill 1698

Status: vetoed.

Summary: sponsored by Senator Wadsack, SB 1698 was initially introduced as an extreme drag ban with mandatory prison time. With a floor amendment from the sponsor, the bill has been edited to remove all references to drag, but it still has concerning first amendment issues.

Senate Bill 1700

Status: failed to receive a committee hearing by the second deadline.

Summary: sponsored by Senator Wadsack, SB 1700 requires school boards to ban all books that promote “gender fluidity or gender pronouns,” equating this to “grooming” and pedophilia. This blatantly unconstitutional and viciously transphobic bill would mean the total erasure of trans identity and gender nonconformity from school materials.

Senate Bill 1702

Status: failed to receive a committee hearing by the first deadline.

Summary: sponsored by Senator Wadsack, SB 1702 would ban transgender youth from accessing puberty blockers and gender affirming hormone therapies. This is an attempt to reinstate provisions that were struck from a ban last session.

House Bill 2317

Status: failed to receive a committee hearing by the first deadline.

Summary: sponsored by Representative Jones, HB 2317 would direct schools to ask parents to provide a list of topics school counselors would be prohibited from discussing with students. Under this policy, parents could ban school counselors from discussing any of the social challenges a queer student might face because of their identity.

House Bill 2517

Status: failed to receive a committee hearing by the first deadline.

Summary: sponsored by Representative Barbara Parker, HB 2517 would ban X gender markers on state-issued identity documents, like driver licenses or birth certificates

House Bill 2711

Status: failed to receive a committee hearing by the first deadline.

Summary: sponsored by Representative Kolodin, HB 2711 would require school employees and contractors to out LGBTQ+ students to their parents. No exception is made for students who are not ready to have the conversation with their parents or who may have unsupportive and potentially abusive parents.

Pro-LGBTQ+ Bills

House Bill 2068

Status: failed to receive a committee hearing by the first deadline.

Summary: sponsored by Representative Gutierrez, HB 2068 would repeal Arizona’s trans student athlete ban, which bans trans girls from girls sports in schools.

House Bill 2351

Status: failed to receive a committee hearing by the first deadline.

Summary: sponsored by Representative P. Contreras, HB 2351 is a conversion therapy ban. It prohibits healthcare professionals from attempting to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of anyone under the age of 18.

House Concurrent Resolution 2014

Status: failed to receive a committee hearing by the first deadline.

Summary: sponsored by Representative De Los Santos, HCR 2014 would repeal the Arizona Constitution’s ban on same-sex marriage, replacing it with protections for same-sex and interracial marriages. If passed by the legislature, it would be sent to the ballot in 2024.

Supporting Youth Rights

Senate Bill 1062

Status: held in the House Health and Human Services Committee.

Summary: sponsored by Senator Shope, SB 1062 would give unhoused 16- and 17-year-old youth the right to consent to shelter, housing, and related services.

House Bill 2606

Status: failed to receive a committee hearing by the first deadline.

Summary: sponsored by Representative Barbara Parker, HB 2606 would require courts to interview children about potential abuse and to consider their wishes in regards to questions of legal decision-making and parenting time.

House Concurrent Resolution 2004

Status: failed to receive a committee hearing by the first deadline.

Summary: sponsored by Representative Gress, HCR 2004 proposes an amendment to the Arizona Constitution that would lower the minimum age requirement for state legislators from 25 to 18. If passed by the legislature, it would be sent to the ballot in 2024.

Addressing The Housing Crisis

Right now, Arizona has a shortage of 270,000 homes, a crisis of access and affordability that disproportionately harms the LGBTQ+ community — while a large majority of non-LGBT adults own their own homes (70.1%, according to the Williams Institute), less than half of LGBT adults are home owners (only 49.8%). LGBT people who rent are also 28% more likely to move than non-LGBT renters, making us even more vulnerable in a housing shortage. Queer people, especially queer youth, are also more likely to experience housing insecurity and homelessness.

While there are many factors at play, the preponderance of evidence makes it clear that zoning is the main cause of Arizona’s housing shortage, and as long as housing supply remains drastically lower than demand, other positive reforms will be largely unable to address affordability. Right now, there are three active bills carrying forward research-based solutions to the housing crisis.

Senate Bill 1161

With a strike everything amendment from Representative Ortiz, this bill accomplishes three major priorities. First, it enables by-right development of high-density affordable housing along the light rail and street car in commercial, mixed-use, and residential zones, making important exceptions not to develop near airports or to displace mobile home parks. Second, it requires cities to submit rigorous five-year housing needs assessments to the state. Third, it allows Arizona residents to be prioritized for federal housing choice vouchers.

Senate Bill 1163

With a strike everything amendment from Representative Hendrix, this bill focuses on expanding options for affordable housing, like manufactured homes, and requires cities with more than 30,000 residents to create additional residential zones that allow for duplexes and triplexes. Data from a Zillow research report showed that LGBTQ+ people, and especially LGBTQ+ people of color, purchased affordable home types like duplexes and triplexes at far higher rates than cisgender and heterosexual home buyers. Like SB 1161, this bill also requires cities to create five-year housing needs assessments.

House Bill 2536

With a strike-everything amendment from Senator Kaiser, this bill enables construction of unique affordable housing options like accessory dwelling units (casitas) and dorm-style senior housing. Another provision of the bill would end minimum parking requirements for residential developments, allowing for greater density and more walkable neighborhoods. It also expedites rezoning to residential use and restricts “design review,” a process that creates essentially no value, but is often abused to bog down development of affordable housing.

Protecting Reproductive Rights

House Bill 2125

Status: failed to receive a committee hearing by the deadline.

Summary: sponsored by Representative Salman, HB 2125 would repeal Arizona's territorial-era laws criminalizing abortion providers (ARS 13-3603) and the advertisement of abortion services (ARS 13-3605).

How the Legislature Runs

The schedule and parliamentary procedures of the Arizona Legislature can feel archaic and impenetrable, but they don't have to be. With the important caveat that almost every rule can be bent by a simple majority vote, the schedule of the session and the process a bill follows to become a law are largely the same as they have been for decades. The legislature's own guide to the process dates back to the year 2000, but it's still worth a read.

Legislative Session Calendar

What It's All About

From the start of the session to sine die, lawmakers introduce, debate, amend, and vote on updates to the Arizona Revised Statutes. From the first draft to the Governor's desk (or the ballot), there are countless ways for a bill to die or be brought back to life. Bills aren't always written with the expectation that they'll become law, or even that they'll get a committee assignment. It's a complicated and high-stakes conversation about Arizona's needs, values, and direction as a state. That conversation needs your voice.

How to Make Your Voice Heard

With new waves of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation swirling around the state capitol each year, most of it cut-and-paste copies of bills from other states or fill-in-the-blank templates from homophobic and transphobic special interest groups, it certainly doesn't feel like the Arizona legislature is listening to Arizona's communities. But you can make your voice heard. Every year, victories for LGBTQ+ rights are won at the capitol through public testimony, good-faith conversation, and intentional relationship building.

Request to Speak on azleg.gov

You don't have to go to the capitol to keep up to date with what's going on in the legislature. Bills, amendments, and agendas for committee meetings are all available on azleg.gov, where you can watch livestreams and archived videos of the legislative process. With a tool called Request to Speak, you can sign up to give testimony on the issues you care about in committee. If you need help activating your account, preparing your testimony, or getting to the capitol, let us know.

Tips for Testimony

  1. Be prepared. Understand how legislation is designed to shape conversation, and try to reframe the issue around your own principles. Especially when it comes to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, you don't need to accept the conversation on their terms. Research their claims, investigate their priorities, and center the real people and communities the bills would affect.

  2. Be prepared to adjust. When you're in a committee meeting, lawmakers won't always ask the same questions or use the same words you would to discuss an issue or a piece of legislation. It's important to pay attention to how they think things through, and to have the conversation that's happening in the room. Not everyone is going to listen, but people can and do change when we can establish a genuine dialogue.

  3. Follow procedure. It's common for testimony to be limited to just two minutes, so it can be helpful to practice with a stopwatch. When you begin your testimony or answer a question, always speak "through the chair," addressing the chair of the committee first, and only then the other members (even when you're answering a question from someone other than the chair).

Meet Your Legislators

Arizona is drawn into 30 legislative districts, each of which elects a senator and two representatives. With redistricting and a recent wave of resignations, the waters are a little muddier, but with the search tool at the end of this page, you can find the three legislators who represent you specifically at the capitol. By and large, most legislators really do want to hear from their constituents; you can call or email them, or even set a meeting. It can be hard to get on their calendars, and intimidating to have a face-to-face conversation with an elected official, so we're here to help. Contact Equality Arizona, and we'll help you to schedule and prepare for a meeting with your legislators.

The 2022 Legislative Session in Review

Tracking LGBTQ+ Policy in 2022

Session Overview & Legislative Scorecards

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 in the 2022 legislative 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 here, visit azleg.gov and search by the bill number.