Tim Walz’s state became a ‘trans refuge.’ Here’s what that means and how it happened

MINNEAPOLIS — As Gov. Tim Walz prepares to debate Sen. JD Vance Tuesday night, Minnesota’s status as a “trans refuge” state will likely be in the spotlight.

“He’s very heavy into transgender, anything transgender he thinks is great,” former President Trump said on Fox the day after Walz was announced as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate. (Trump has pledged, if elected, to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally.)

In Arizona earlier this month, Vance falsely claimed the “trans refuge” law Walz signed allows the state to “take children away from their parents if their parents don’t want to do sex changes.” He added, “that is not small government, that is disgusting, and he should be ashamed of himself.”

Here’s what the “trans refuge” law in Minnesota is, how it’s working, and how involved Walz was in getting the law passed.

A Democratic trifecta

The first thing to understand about how politically purple Minnesota came to pass this law, is that in 2022, voters elected Democratic majorities in both houses of the legislature and the governorship. It was the first Democratic trifecta in a decade, and lawmakers came in with a list of priorities.

Making the state a “trans refuge” wasn’t on that list. But freshman Rep. Leigh Finke, the first transgender member of Minnesota’s state legislature, made sure it was added.

“I knew that we had to do something because the national, coordinated anti-trans wave was building steam,” Finke says.

In 2023, between January and May, 15 states across the country enacted laws banning gender-affirming care for youth, including Minnesota’s neighboring states of Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota.

“The dominoes fell in 2023,” Finke says. “The self-evident urgency became clear to the members of the Minnesota legislature.”

Walz’s support was key to passage

Walz, from the governor’s mansion, was an active ally in the effort to protect transgender people in the state and not a newcomer to the issues, Finke says. “Walz is a teacher and his history includes being the Gay Straight Alliance advisor at Mankato West [high school],” she points out. “People who are around young people and have seen what it means to deny people their authentic fullness — they understand it.”

He was “clear eyed in his support for this all along,” Finke says, and quickly signed an executive order to put some protections in place in case the bill didn’t get through the legislature. Because her party had only a very slim majority, Finke says she spoke to “every single Democrat in the legislature — and some of them for hours and hours,” about the bill and its importance.

The day of the vote in the House, protestors arguing for and against the bill filled the state house. Debate on the floor was contentious and many hours long. “We voted at 5:45 in the morning in the House — it was a filibuster situation — and everybody stayed up and made it happen,” she said. In the end, the bill passed in both the house and the senate, and only two Democrats across the legislature voted against it, she says. “I feel incredibly proud and grateful.”

Walz signed the bill in front of cameras. As he signed, he said “Love wins,” and handed one pen to preteen Hildie Edwards, who had testified in support of the law, and another to Rep. Finke.

What the law says

The text of the law protects the privacy of both patients and clinicians when it comes to gender-affirming care in Minnesota.

“If you are trying to access health care for transition-related reasons, you can access that care in the state of Minnesota no matter where you live, and while you are in the state of Minnesota, our laws will protect you,” Finke explains.

The law also protects medical providers from out-of-state subpoenas. Finke points to how Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tried to get medical records for transgender Texans from Seattle Children’s Hospital. “Under our bill, the attorney general is tasked with protecting people in Minnesota to receive gender-affirming care,” she says, so hospitals and doctors in the state don’t need to worry about that kind of effort.

The law does not regulate the care itself — it was already legal in Minnesota, and the details of a patient’s treatment are governed by standards of care, and by an individual’s choices, made in consultation with their family and doctor.

One provision of the law concerns custody cases, which Vance pointed to when he claimed the state of Minnesota could kidnap kids. “There's nothing like that anywhere around this law — it's a made up lie,” Finke says. The bill allows certain custody cases to be heard in family court in Minnesota and judges to issue temporary orders, but it does not determine which parent gets custody or hand custody to the state. “The state cannot claim jurisdiction or custody of a child,” she says. “Of course it can't.”

A trans influx

Since Minnesota’s trans refuge law was in response to anti-trans legislation in states across the country, the circumstances are “much more tragic than celebratory,” Finke says.

Many trans people and their families living in states with bans feel like they’re being driven out. “Hundreds of people and families within the first six months moved to Minnesota — I'm sure that's a major undercount,” Finke says. “And I know as the election comes, we're getting more and more.” She says trans people and their families are worried about what another Trump presidency could mean for their rights, not just in relation to health care access, but also military service, housing and employment discrimination, among other issues.

Since Minnesota’s law took effect last spring, it has affected health care providers in the state. Children’s Minnesota, which runs a gender program for youth, has seen an increase of about 30% in calls from patients in neighboring states. The hospital tells NPR their waitlist is about a year long for new patients, and they have hired new clinicians to keep up with demand. Family Tree Clinic, a Minneapolis provider of gender-affirming care, has begun a program to help train more physicians on this kind of care around the state.

Some families who can’t relocate end up driving hundreds of miles to see gender-affirming care providers in Minnesota. One Minneapolis doctor told NPR he currently has 15 patients who do so.

Walz leans in

On the presidential campaign trail, Walz isn’t shy about his support for LGBTQ+ rights.

He headlined the recent Human Rights Campaign annual dinner and proudly enumerated the ways that both he and Harris have supported LGBTQ+ rights through their careers. He told the crowd, as he has said many times on the campaign trail, that there’s a saying in Minnesota: “Everything works better if you just mind your own damn business and I'll mind mine.”

“That's truly a long standing Minnesota value here,” says Finke, who was born and raised in the state. “People don't necessarily want to get involved, for better or worse, in their neighbors' lives, and that has allowed us to do a lot of good progressive work.”

“Some of the earliest trans action for civil rights was done here,” she adds. “In 1978, there was a case argued by the ACLU for a trans woman in the Army to be able to stay and keep her job. We were the first state to protect trans people in our Human Rights Act. It's always just been a part of the fabric here.”

The personal is political

Rep. Leigh Finke has faced fierce opposition to her trans legislative work — including threats and harassment. In a way, that has helped fuel her own political rise. “I’m a little bit famous in the Midwest,” she grins.

“There were some viral moments from the House floor from conservatives going on tirades against me and against trans people, and it provided an opportunity for us to be able to stand strong, to be able to say, ‘Here we are, queer forever, you can't just yell at us and have us go away,’” she says.

She’s had positive attention, too. Last year, she was named the USA Today “Woman of the Year” for Minnesota, and she was recognized as a “Health Hero” by Children’s Minnesota.

And she is happy that there is more representation of trans people in public life than when she was growing up in the 80s and 90s in suburban Minnesota. “You can’t be what you can’t see,” she says, noting that she didn’t come out as trans until adulthood. “And I'm so grateful that I did. And I'm so grateful that I get to be in a position now where other people can see not just that there are trans people, but that we're succeeding.”

But when she knocks on doors for her re-election bid this fall, Finke says trans issues are not what voters are concerned about. “I think that, in general, people don't want to be talking about trans kids, they would rather just let us live our lives.”

She’s happy to talk about her other political priorities, like housing and the arts and urban tree policy, instead.