After two years of trying to be heard, transgender New Jerseyans and parents of transgender youth will finally get a chance to testify on a bill that would protect gender-affirming care at the state Capitol Monday.

L.B., a South Jersey parent of a transgender kid who was granted anonymity for her child’s privacy, said members of the community started calling babysitters and asking for favors — “moving heaven and earth” — to make it to the hearing once it was posted on the agenda late last week.

“This is definitely the moment that we’ve been waiting for, and really, our community deserves this chance to be heard,” she said.

The New Jersey Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee will hear testimony for the bill on Monday, an important step to reach a floor vote. The Assembly Health Committee also scheduled a hearing for Thursday, signaling that lawmakers want to move forward with the bill quickly after delays in previous years.

The bill would legally protect gender-affirming care in New Jersey — both for residents and people traveling to the state — and make it a crime to intervene against such care. Gender-affirming care encompasses a wide variety of care such as counseling or medication that delays puberty and has been widely viewed by major medical associations as medically necessary and even life-saving.

Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill has not publicly endorsed the bill and did not explicitly defend transgender rights during last year’s heated campaign, which frustrated members of the community even though they understood why. But advocates say she’s privately indicated support, and her record in Congress was largely in line with protecting trans rights.

The hearing comes as conservative states ramp up legislative efforts targeting transgender people, emboldened by President Donald Trump. As much as New Jersey is considered LGBTQ+ friendly, it lags behind other states that have already implemented shield laws for gender-affirming care.

“I want to know that this is a safe place to raise my child,” said D.H., another New Jersey parent with a transgender child who was granted anonymity for her child’s privacy. “And that it took so long to get here, it’s disappointing.”

D.H. has been terrified as she reads about high suicide rates among youth in states with gender-affirming care restrictions, and hears the president accuse parents like her of child abuse. She was among the parents, transgender New Jerseyans, and allies who reached out to legislators from Cape May and Camden Counties up to North Jersey.

They repeatedly told their stories and secured sponsorships from at least 75% of Democrats in the Assembly and Senate, which made the several delays even more frustrating at times. One of the delays, they were told, was to wait until after the 2025 gubernatorial election as Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli attacked Sherrill on the issue.

Sherrill declined to comment on pending legislation earlier this year but told The Inquirer she is “is very supportive of keeping people safe with both protections and privacy rights.”

The bill, which was first introduced in 2024, would cement protections for providing and receiving gender-affirming care that Gov. Phil Murphy implemented through a 2023 executive order. It groups together gender-affirming care with other reproductive care.

As law, the policy will have broader authority than the order, said Khadijah Silver, the director of gender justice and health equity at Lawyers for Good Government, who has worked on the bill. It also couldn’t be signed away with a stroke of a pen like an executive order.

Along with patients and providers, the bill would also protect entities like abortion funds and parents of transgender youth, Silver said.

Silver said that part of the holdup has been ironing out technicalities and educating lawmakers amid a continuously changing legal landscape under the Trump administration that has instilled “incredible fear” in legislators.

Under the bill, New Jersey would not cooperate with other states like Texas and Louisiana that are trying to enforce bans across state lines, said Silver, who called it a “coordinated cold civil war between states over whether people have bodily autonomy or don’t.”

Some of the allies who have been pushing for the bill led the fight for marriage equality in New Jersey, like Louise Walpin, a member of one of the first same-sex couples to wed in the state in 2013.

Walpin said community members sharing their stories as well as nuances around language are important in both causes. What’s different with this fight, she said, is that it’s about life or death.

“We definitely needed those rights, but it wasn’t going to kill us,” she said of marriage equality. “This is health care.”

Jeannine LaRue, the former chair of Garden State Equality’s nonprofit arm who has advocated for marriage equality and protecting gender-affirming care, said legislators’ willingness to even discuss the bill publicly is a positive sign for the movement.

“The bill has never been in a format where leadership felt comfortable putting it up for even a discussion,’ LaRue said. “That’s been the frustrating part of it.”

Jennifer Williams, who serves on the Trenton City Council and became the first transgender person elected to a New Jersey municipal council in 2022, said Friday she’s “cautiously optimistic.”

Williams, who describes herself as a “moderate Reagan Republican,” is a longtime advocate for protecting care in the state.

She said the last time she testified in Trenton was for a 2018 bill to allow transgender people to have their gender listed on their death certificates. She never would have foreseen that eight years later she would be “almost begging for our right to have medically necessary” care, she said. But she’s excited for transgender New Jerseyans to stand up for themselves on Monday.

“A lot of parents, a lot of other transgender people, having tried to educate folks on why this bill is important, a lot of folks were beginning to give up along the way,” she said. “I think this moment will allow them to believe again.”

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