Pink Rose Society

LGBTQ+ Rights in Ohio

Ohio enters the 2026 election having enacted, over the past two years, two of the most consequential anti-LGBTQ+ laws in its history — a ban on gender-affirming care for minors and a school-and-campus "bathroom" law. Whether those laws stand, expand, or fall now turns on offices that are all on the 2026 ballot: the Ohio Supreme Court, the Ohio Attorney General, the governor, and the Ohio General Assembly.

HB 68 — the care ban and the sports ban

House Bill 68 combined two measures: it bans gender-affirming medical care (puberty blockers, hormone therapy, surgery) for transgender minors, and it bars transgender girls and women from female sports from kindergarten through college.

  • Mike DeWine vetoed HB 68 on December 29, 2023, saying such decisions belong to "the parents." The Republican supermajority overrode the veto in January 2024; the law took effect in August 2024.
  • Moe v. Yost (ACLU, ACLU of Ohio, and Goodwin, for two families) challenges the care ban as violating the Ohio Constitution's Health Care Freedom Amendment and parental rights. A trial court upheld the law (2024); the Tenth District Court of Appeals struck it down on March 18, 2025. The Ohio Supreme Court stayed that ruling on April 29, 2025 — putting the ban back in force — heard oral argument in March 2026, and has not issued a final decision.

SB 104 — the "bathroom" law

Senate Bill 104, the "Protect All Students Act," was signed by Mike DeWine on November 27, 2024 and took effect February 25, 2025. It requires multi-occupancy restrooms, locker rooms, and showers in K-12 schools and in higher education — public and private — to be designated by birth sex, and bars shared overnight K-12 accommodations across birth sex. It specifies no enforcement mechanism, which pushed compliance decisions onto individual schools and campuses. Equality Ohio and the ACLU of Ohio condemned it.

Why it matters in 2026

Every lever that decides the fate of these laws is contested this cycle:

Sources