Indiana General Assembly
The Indiana General Assembly is the state's bicameral legislature, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Its entries reach back to 2014, among the longer ranges in the archive for a state body. They record bills it passed on state civil rights protections and on parental non-affirmation of a child's gender identity, generally alongside the governor who signed them.
2025 Events (3)
Indiana Gov. Braun signed HB1412, shielding parents' non-affirmation of transgender children from child-neglect review
On May 1, 2025, Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed House Bill 1412 into law as Public Law 168, revising the state's child-abuse-and-neglect reporting statutes. The law specifies that a child is not a "child in need of services" solely because a parent, guardian, or custodian refers to and raises the child consistent with the child's biological sex. The provision shields a parent's non-affirmation of a transgender child's gender identity from being treated as neglect by the Indiana Department of Child Services.
Indiana Gov. Braun signed SB143, barring schools from withholding student information from parents and enabling forced outing of LGBTQ students
On April 24, 2025, Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed Senate Bill 143, the "Parental rights" law, taking effect July 1, 2025. The law bars government entities — including public schools and the Department of Child Services — from advising, directing, or coercing a child to withhold information from a parent, or from denying a parent access to information about their child, absent a compelling interest. The ACLU of Indiana warned the measure can compel the forced outing of transgender and gender-nonconforming students to their parents.
Indiana enacted HB 1041 extending its transgender-athlete ban to women's college sports
On April 3, 2025, the Indiana General Assembly gave final passage to House Bill 1041 by a 42-6 Senate vote, extending the state's 2022 ban on transgender athletes in K-12 sports to public colleges and universities. Governor Mike Braun signed the measure in April 2025 and it took effect July 1, 2025, barring athletes assigned male at birth from women's college teams, requiring institutions to adopt grievance procedures, and creating a private right of action allowing students to sue over suspected violations.
2023 Events (5)
Indiana enacted HB 1447, barring 'obscene' materials from school libraries and stripping educators' 'harmful to minors' defense
On May 4, 2023, Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed House Enrolled Act 1447, which bars public school and charter school libraries from making available materials deemed "obscene" or "harmful to minors" and requires published catalogs and challenge-and-removal procedures. The law also removed the "legitimate educational purpose" affirmative defense that had shielded schools and their employees from Level 6 felony prosecution for disseminating material "harmful to minors." The library-restriction language, originally a stalled standalone bill, was inserted through a closed-door conference committee without public testimony.
Indiana Gov. Holcomb signed HB 1608, barring K-3 instruction on human sexuality and requiring schools to notify parents of gender-identity requests
On May 4, 2023, Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed House Enrolled Act 1608 into law, creating a new statute (IC 20-30-17) that bars schools, employees, and third-party vendors from providing any instruction on "human sexuality" to students in prekindergarten through grade 3. A separate provision (IC 20-33-7.5) requires schools to notify a parent in writing within five business days whenever an unemancipated minor student requests to be identified by a different name, pronoun, or title. The bill passed the House 65-29, took effect July 1, 2023, and is codified as Public Law 248-2023.
Indiana Gov. Holcomb signed SB 350, voiding local bans on conversion therapy for minors
On May 1, 2023, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed Senate Enrolled Act 350 into law, barring any Indiana city, town, or county from regulating behavioral health and human-services practitioners licensed or certified under IC 25-23.6. The measure, added as IC 25-23.6-2-8.5, was authored in response to local ordinances in Indianapolis, Bloomington, and elsewhere that had prohibited licensed practitioners from performing conversion therapy on minors, and it voids those bans and bars future local protections. Indiana maintains no statewide ban on the practice.
Indiana Gov. Holcomb signed HB1569, barring state funds for gender-affirming surgery for incarcerated people
On April 20, 2023, Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed House Enrolled Act 1569 into law, adding Indiana Code 11-10-3-3.5 to bar the Indiana Department of Correction from authorizing state or federal funds to provide or facilitate gender-affirming surgery for incarcerated people, even when recommended by a medical provider. The measure, passed by the Indiana General Assembly, left hormone therapy untouched and took effect July 1, 2023. It did not apply to inmates already approved for surgery before that date.
Indiana Gov. Holcomb signed SB 480, banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors statewide
On April 5, 2023, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed Senate Enrolled Act 480, barring physicians and other practitioners from knowingly providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone therapy, or gender-transition surgery to anyone under 18, on pain of professional discipline. The law, which added IC 25-1-22 to the state code, carved out exceptions for minors with medically verifiable intersex conditions and for treating complications of prior care, and required minors already on hormone therapy to stop by December 31, 2023. It took effect July 1, 2023.
2022 Events (1)
Indiana Legislature overrode Gov. Holcomb's veto to enact HB 1041, a K-12 transgender sports ban
The Indiana General Assembly voted to override Gov. Eric Holcomb's veto of HB 1041 on May 24, 2022 — the House 67-28 and the Senate 32-15 — enacting House Enrolled Act 1041 into law. The statute bars students who are male based on sex assigned at birth from participating on girls'-designated K-12 athletic teams, creating a civil cause of action against schools that allow a transgender girl to compete while immunizing schools that exclude her.
2014 Events (1)
Indiana General Assembly passed amended HJR-3, a constitutional same-sex marriage ban
On January 28, 2014, the Indiana House of Representatives voted 57-40 to pass an amended version of House Joint Resolution 3, a proposed state constitutional amendment providing that "only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Indiana," after first stripping a second sentence that would have also barred civil unions and domestic-partnership benefits. The Indiana Senate passed the same amended language 32-17 on February 17, 2014, completing the resolution's passage by the 2014 General Assembly; because Indiana requires an identically worded amendment to pass two separately elected General Assemblies before going to a public referendum, the change restarted that two-Assembly clock and the measure did not reach the 2014 ballot.