LGBT rights in North Dakota: Difference between revisions
==== Pronouns ====
==== Pronouns ====
In March 2023, a bill passed the [[North Dakota Legislature]] that bans preferred gender pronouns for trans people within all state-run schools and classrooms. The [[Governor of North Dakota]] formally vetoed the bill.[https://thehill.com/homenews/3926656-north-dakota-governor-vetoes-bill-restricting-transgender-students-pronouns/][https://apnews.com/article/transgender-pronouns-schools-veto-north-dakota-3f867fcf1460c11af5da4d7e0f7661e8][https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/north-dakota-house-passes-school-gender-pronoun-prohibition/]
In March 2023, a bill passed the [[North Dakota Legislature]] that bans preferred gender pronouns for trans people within all state-run schools and classrooms. The [[Governor of North Dakota]] formally vetoed the bill.[https://thehill.com/homenews/3926656-north-dakota-governor-vetoes-bill-restricting-transgender-students-pronouns/][https://apnews.com/article/transgender-pronouns-schools-veto-north-dakota-3f867fcf1460c11af5da4d7e0f7661e8][https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/north-dakota-house-passes-school-gender-pronoun-prohibition/]
==== Bathroom bans ====
In April 2023, a bill passed both houses of the [[North Dakota legislature]] and was signed into law by the [[Governor of North Dakota]] to explicitly banning public bathroom usage for transgender individuals – throughout North Dakota facilities and businesses. Effective July 1.[https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/icymi-governor-doug-burgum-signs-discriminatory-bathroom-bill-into-law-inviting-more-instances-of-harassment-and-violence-against-transgender-north-dakotans]
==Politics==
==Politics==
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons in the U.S. state of North Dakota may face some legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Same-sex sexual activity is legal in North Dakota, and same-sex couples and families headed by same-sex couples are eligible for all of the protections available to opposite-sex married couples; same-sex marriage has been legal since June 2015 as a result of Obergefell v. Hodges. State statutes do not address discrimination on account of sexual orientation or gender identity; however, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County established that employment discrimination against LGBT people is illegal under federal law.
Laws regarding same-sex sexual activity[edit]
Prior to European settlement in the 18th and 19th centuries, there were no known legal or social punishments for engaging in homosexual activity. Perceptions toward gender and sexuality within Native American tribes both were and still are different than those of people from European descent. Several tribes have traditions of “third gender” people (also called “two-spirit“) who perform tasks and wear clothes within the tribe that outsiders may consider to be gender non-conforming or incongruous with their primary or secondary sex characteristics. Among the Arikara, “male-bodied” people who “act as women” are known as skuxát. Likewise, the Hidatsa and the Mandan refer to them as miati and mihdeke, respectively, while they are known as wįktą, winkta and wíŋkte (or winkte) among the Assiniboine, the Dakota and the Lakota.[1]
The first criminal law against sodomy in North Dakota was enacted in 1862, then the Dakota Territory. It prohibited heterosexual and homosexual fellatio. The law was expanded in 1885 to include anal intercourse.[2] The state’s vagrancy laws were expanded in 1903 to cover anyone whose speech or conduct was deemed to be “lewd, wanton and lascivious”.[2] In State v. Nelson (1917), the North Dakota Supreme Court broadened the scope of the sodomy law to include acts of cunnilingus.
In 1927, a law initially designed to permit the sterilization of mentally and physically disabled inmates was expanded to include anyone who state authorities believed might be “habitual criminals, moral degenerates and sexual perverts”.[2] The forced sterilization law was repealed in 1965.
In 1973, the state legalized private, adult, consensual homosexual relations as part of a larger revision of the Criminal Code that set the universal age of consent at eighteen years.[3]
Recognition of same-sex relationships[edit]
Same-sex marriage has been legal in North Dakota since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015, which found the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples unconstitutional. The state had previously restricted marriage to the union of one man and one woman and denied recognition to same-sex unions under any legal designation both in its Constitution and by statute.[4][5]
A lawsuit challenging the state’s refusal to license and recognize same-sex marriages, Ramsay v. Dalrymple, was initiated in June 2014, but proceedings were suspended in January 2015…
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