Republican Governor Greg Gianforte has signed a bill defining the word “sex” in state law as only male or female — joining Kansas and Tennessee, which have similar laws that LGBTQ+ advocates argue will deny legal recognition to nonbinary and transgender people.
Medical professionals say the laws also ignore that some people are born as intersex — a term that encompasses about 60 conditions in which a person is born with genitalia, reproductive organs, chromosomes and/or hormone levels that don’t fit typical definitions of male or female.