Almost Every Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill in This Congress Failed. HRC Has the Scorecard.
October 23, 2026For two years the headlines have been about attacks. The Human Rights Campaign's new scorecard for the 119th Congress tells a different story about how most of them ended.
HRC released its Congressional Scorecard on Monday, rating every member of the House and Senate on their votes and co-sponsorships over the two-year session. The headline finding is simple: dozens of measures were put forward targeting LGBTQ+ people, and nearly all of them died before reaching the President's desk.
What was attempted
The bills covered familiar ground. Restrictions on transgender people's rights, including healthcare and participation in public life. Measures that would have narrowed the definition of family in ways that cut LGBTQ+ parents out. Voting rules that would have made it harder for marginalised groups to cast a ballot. With Republican majorities in both chambers and a White House pushing in the same direction, the expectation at the start of 2025 was that a good number of these would pass.
What actually happened
Most didn't. HRC credits pro-equality lawmakers in both chambers for blocking them, often through procedural votes that got little attention outside Washington. The organisation's president, Kelley Robinson, summed it up by saying opponents of equality "were no match for our champions on Capitol Hill".
The scorecard is not a clean sweep. Executive action has moved ahead where legislation stalled, and HRC itself has spent much of the year fighting rule changes at agency level, including the Education Department's decision in September to drop protections for LGBTQ+ students. But on the legislative side, the record is clearer than most people would guess.
A more representative Congress
The 119th Congress also broke several firsts. Sarah McBride of Delaware became the first openly transgender member of Congress. Julie Johnson of Texas became the first openly LGBTQ+ member from a Southern state. Emily Randall of Washington became the first LGBTQ+ Latina in Congress, and Everton Blair of Georgia the first out Black gay man elected from the South.
That matters for the scorecard too. Several of the procedural fights that stopped bills were led or shaped by members who would not have been in the room a decade ago.
Why it matters for the workplace
For anyone running an ERG or an inclusion programme with US staff, the past two years have been exhausting. A lot of that exhaustion has come from anticipating laws that, in the end, did not pass. That is worth knowing when planning for next year. The threat environment is real, but the federal legislative picture is not as bad as the volume of proposals suggests.
It also lines up with what we saw at Nike's shareholder meeting last month, where a proposal to roll back LGBTQ+ giving and trans-inclusive benefits drew less than 1% support. Whether in Congress or the boardroom, the people pushing these measures are louder than they are numerous.
The midterm elections are on 3 November, and the next Congress will be a different one. The full scorecard, including how every member voted, is at hrc.im/scorecard.