Texas’s HB 3817: Criminalizing Trans Identity

06/06/2025

In March 2025, Texas Rep. Tom Oliverson introduced House Bill 3817 — a bill that would make it a state jail felony for someone to identify as a gender different from their sex assigned at birth on any government form or employment document. That’s up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine for simply stating the truth about who you are.

According to HB 3817, a person commits “gender identity fraud” if they knowingly make a verbal or written statement identifying as a gender different from their assigned sex at birth. This applies even if they’ve legally updated their gender marker. The penalty? Felony charges.

Read that again: the state wants to send trans people to prison for telling the truth about their own identities.

If HB 3817 passes, being transgender in Texas becomes punishable by law.

• A trans woman updating her driver’s license? Felony.

• A trans man applying for a job and checking “male”? Felony.

• A nonbinary person changing their name and marker on a state form? Felony.

If this feels familiar, it should. Because we’ve seen this before — nearly 100 years ago.

In 1933, one of the first acts of the Nazi regime was to raid and destroy the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin. This institution was a groundbreaking center for LGBTQ+ research and support, led by Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, a pioneer in transgender medicine and rights.

• Nazi soldiers burned thousands of scientific studies and medical records that supported trans and queer people.

• They criminalized trans existence.

• They imprisoned queer people in concentration camps under the pink triangle, where many were sterilized, tortured, or killed.

They didn’t just attack lives.

They erased knowledge.

This is what Texas is doing now — not with book burnings, but with legislation.

They are using the law to suppress the truth about gender, to punish authenticity, and to roll back a century of human rights.

Texas has introduced more anti-trans bills than any other state in 2025 — over 120 and counting. And HB 3817 is a dangerous escalation in that war: not regulating gender, not restricting access — but criminalizing existence. And what happens when trans people fear the legal consequences of living openly?

• They stop seeking healthcare.

• They stop applying for jobs.

• They go silent, go underground, or leave the state altogether.

• Trans folks will be forced to lie or hide their identity to avoid jail.

• Jobs, healthcare, housing, and education access will collapse for anyone who’s not cisgender.

• This bill will spread — and copycat legislation will follow.

The bill doesn’t need to pass to do damage. Just introducing it sends a signal: that trans lives are negotiable, optional, and up for legislative erasure. It tells employers, teachers, and law enforcement it’s okay to treat transgender people like threats — or worse, criminals.

Texas isn’t an outlier. It’s a testing ground. The playbook starts here and spreads.

• If this bill passes, other states will copy it.

• If it fails quietly, the next version will be more extreme.

• If no one speaks up, lawmakers will think we’re fine with this — and we are not.