How Trump’s SAVE America Act could bar trans people from voting

Experts say tackling these proposed voting restrictions is especially challenging amid a deluge of attacks on trans people.

Millions of transgender Americans could face increased barriers at the polls if Republican members of Congress cave to pressure from President Donald Trump and pass first-of-their-kind federal voting restrictions.

In May, Trump called upon Republicans to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (also known as the SAVE America Act). This would require proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, when registering to vote, as well as a photo ID to cast a ballot in any election. 

In his post, Trump urged Republicans to attach the bill to must-pass legislation, namely a bill to extend the warrantless spying powers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as well as a bipartisan housing bill.

On Wednesday, Trump suddenly canceled plans to sign a major housing bill, which is aimed at lowering the cost of housing and speeding up home construction, until the voting restrictions are passed. 

He posted on Truth Social about the abrupt change, writing that “Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.” 

The Movement Advancement Project has said the strict ID rules could disenfranchise as many as 3.3 million transgender voters, who could be turned away if their ID lists a different name or gender marker than they currently use. 

The SAVE America Act is the successor to the massively unpopular SAVE Act that Republicans unsuccessfully tried to pass last year. The Center for American Progress said that if the SAVE America Act becomes law, it would be the first time in history that Congress passed legislation to restrict the right to vote of American citizens. House Republicans passed the bill in February, and it’s now before the Senate.

As serious as the restrictions would be, Xavier Persad of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says voters need to know that the bill, as it stands, faces a steep path to becoming law. For now, the changes are only hypothetical.

“As terrible as [the restrictions] would be, they are not in existence. … Federal registration rules have not changed, and folks should register or ensure they’re registered under existing state laws and vote as early as possible under state law,” said Persad, senior policy counsel at the ACLU focusing on voting rights and democracy. 

Organizations including the League of Women Voters and Human Rights Watch have raised the alarm about efforts by Republicans to establish strict ID requirements for voters, arguing that they impact women, trans people, and other marginalized groups disproportionately. While the SAVE America Act is still a long way from becoming law, experts and community organizers say even the specter of its restrictions has done lasting damage to voters, especially trans people. 

That damage goes further in states where there are already harsh barriers — or even outright bans — to changing legal identification documents like birth certificates and driver’s licenses. In November, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to enforce a policy that requires passports to reflect a person’s sex as it was assigned at birth. 

Shira Berkowitz, senior director of policy and advocacy at Missouri-based LGBTQ+ advocacy group PROMO, says they have already seen an influx of calls from trans people asking if it’s safe for them to vote, or if they can vote at all.

“The challenges of ‘Is it legal? Is it not legal?’ has already disenfranchised a tremendous number of voters from even deciding that it’s worth it to attempt to show up to vote,” Berkowitz told the TransLash Wire. “We hear all the time from folks who are anxious, stressed out, have the gamut of negative feelings regarding how to navigate a system where they’re not sure what is possible already in terms of an ID.”

According to the Movement Advancement Project, Missouri is one of nine states that requires a court order or proof of surgery in order to change ID documents like a birth certificate, meaning that under the SAVE America Act, transgender Missourians could face steep hurdles (at minimum) when registering to vote.

As harsh as Missouri’s rules may be, five states outright ban people from changing gender markers on state IDs. Officials in Kansas — one of those five states — took the extraordinary step earlier this year of retroactively canceling licenses that were already legally changed. The law also invalidated birth certificates for those who had updated their gender markers. 

NBC reported that 1,700 people had their licenses invalidated in February after Republican legislators rushed a bathroom ban through the statehouse that included a provision that a person’s sex listed on a driver’s license and birth certificate must match their sex as it was assigned at birth. 

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the legislation in February, but Republicans overrode the veto days later. 

Equality Kansas CEO Tom Alonzo says the new ID restrictions impact a few thousand trans people throughout the state — meaning legislators focused their priority on a minute number of people in the state amid a number of crises they could be addressing. 

“To spend their time on legislation affecting 3,000 – 4,000 people … we have an aquifer that’s drying up in 45 years. What’s going to happen to that, exactly?” Alonzo said. “We have a school crisis, we have an economic crisis.”

Like Berkowitz in Missouri, Alonzo expects many trans people in the state to forgo voting entirely, out of fear that they might be blocked or harassed while trying to cast a ballot. But many, he says, are determined to still exercise their constitutional right to vote. 

“Most are very well informed,” he said. “They know that they have to have a current driver’s license; these people are ruthless about your ID and everything, even here in a Democratic county, in a blue county.”

But he clarified that poll workers’ strict adherence to policy isn’t because they agree with stringent ID rules. 

“They don’t want to get in trouble [with election officials].”

Experts say Kansas officials’ efforts almost perfectly illustrate how voter ID laws uniquely affect trans people. The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law has been following this issue for years, and has released a handful of reports detailing the impact of voter ID laws on trans people. 

In its most recent report issued ahead of the 2024 election, the think tank detailed that hundreds of thousands of voting-eligible trans people didn’t have IDs that reflect their correct name or gender, and nearly 200,000 at the time lived in states with the harshest voter ID laws. 

Report author Jody Herman says that impact would almost certainly balloon if the SAVE America Act passes, given its draconian ID requirements. 

“If it were to actually be enacted [and] go into effect, I think there’s just a lot of education that would be needed on how people can maintain their ability to vote, given the myriad layers of administrative systems that everyone has to engage with,” Herman said.

“It happens all the time, and I think the fear of being perceived is enough to already curtail people from wanting to attempt to go vote with having to hand their ID off to a stranger.”

The Williams Institute is just now beginning to study the impact of voter ID restrictions on the coming elections.

But experts say tackling these new voting restrictions is especially challenging, because these restrictions come amid a seemingly never-ending deluge of attacks on trans people. Alonzo, for example, says that casting a ballot in an upcoming election isn’t top of mind for people who are worried about accessing life-saving health care or discrimination-free employment, housing, or education. 

“There’s been a little bit of noise made, but not a lot, because a lot of people moved and are in the process of moving,” Alonzo said. “I think a lot of people are avoiding [voting] and are trying to figure out ways to [leave]. They’re just worried about surviving.”