SB2078 104TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

LRB104 11327 JRC 21414 b

104TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
State of Illinois
2025 and 2026
SB2078

Introduced 2/6/2025, by Sen. Andrew S. Chesney

SYNOPSIS AS INTRODUCED:

New Act
410 ILCS 35/Act rep.
775 ILCS 5/1-103	from Ch. 68, par. 1-103

Creates the Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism Act. Requires the Secretary of State to implement changes to require all Illinois-issued identification documents to reflect the holder's sex as defined in the Act. Requires all State agencies to remove or change their forms and communications to reflect the changes in the Act. Requires the Department of Human Rights to issue guidance to ensure the freedom to express the binary nature of sex and the right to single-sex space in workplaces. Requires the Department of Human Rights to prioritize investigation and litigation to the right and freedoms identified and created under the Act. Provides that the Act takes priority over and supersedes any other State law or rule that appears to or purports to be in conflict with the Act. Makes other changes. Repeals the Equitable Restroom Act. Amends the Illinois Human Rights Act to delete "gender-related identity" from the definition of "sexual orientation."

A BILL FOR

AN ACT concerning human rights.

Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly:

Section 1. Short title. This Act may be cited as the Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism Act.

Section 5. Legislative intent. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women's domestic abuse shelters to women's workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.

This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of "woman" improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.

It is the policy of the State to recognize 2 sexes: male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Accordingly, the State will defend women's rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.

Section 10. Definitions. As used in this Act:

"Female" means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.

"Gender identity" means a fully internal and subjective sense of self disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.

"Gender ideology" means the replacement of the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. "Gender ideology" includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one's sex. "Gender ideology" is internally inconsistent in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.

"Male" means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.

"Men" or "man" and "boys" or "boy" means adult and juvenile human males, respectively.

"Sex" means an individual's immutable biological classification as either male or female. "Sex" is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of gender identity.

"Women" or "woman" and "girls" or "girl" means adult and juvenile human females, respectively.

Section 15. Recognizing women are biologically distinct from men.

(a) Within 30 days of the date of this Act, the Secretary of the Department of Human Services shall provide to State agencies and employees, contractors, and the public clear guidance expanding on the sex-based definitions set forth in this Act.

(b) Each agency and all State employees shall enforce this Act governing sex-based rights, protections, opportunities, and accommodations to protect men and women as biologically distinct sexes. Each agency shall give the terms "sex", "male", "female", "men", "women", "boys" and "girls" the meanings set forth in Section 5 when interpreting or applying statutes, regulations, rules, or guidance and in all other official agency business, documents, and communications.

(c) When administering or enforcing sex-based distinctions, every State agency and all State employees acting in an official capacity on behalf of their agency shall use the term "sex" and not "gender" in all applicable State policies and documents.

(d) The Secretary of State shall implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents to accurately reflect the holder's sex, as defined under Section 5, and the Director of Central Management Services shall ensure that applicable personnel records accurately report State employees' sex, as defined by Section 5.

(e) State agencies shall remove all statements, policies, regulations, rules, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other messages. State agency forms that require an individual's sex shall list male or female and may not request gender identity. State agencies shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the State funding of gender ideology. Each State agency shall assess grant conditions and grantee preferences and ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology.

Section 20. Privacy in intimate spaces.

(a) The Director of the Department of Corrections shall ensure that males are not detained in women's prisons or housed in women's detention centers, revise its policies concerning medical care to be consistent with this Act, and shall ensure that no State funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate's appearance to that of the opposite sex.

(b) State agencies shall effectuate this policy by taking appropriate action to ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females, or for men, boys, or males, are designated by sex and not identity.

Section 25. Protecting rights. The Department of Human Rights shall issue guidance to ensure the freedom to express the binary nature of sex and the right to single-sex spaces in workplaces. The Department shall prioritize investigations and litigation to enforce the rights and freedoms identified and created under this Act.

Section 30. Agency implementation and reporting.

(a) Within 120 days of the date of this Act, each State Agency shall submit an update on implementation of this order to the Governor, the Senate President, the Minority Leader of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. That update shall address:

(1) changes to agency documents, including regulations, rules guidance, forms, and communications made to comply with this Act; and

(2) agency-imposed requirements on State funded entities, including contractors, to achieve the policy of this Act.

(b) Each State agency shall promptly rescind all guidance documents inconsistent with the requirements of this Act or rescind such parts of such documents that are inconsistent in such a manner.

Section 35. General provisions.

(a) Nothing in this Act may be construed to impair or otherwise affect the authority granted by law to a constitutional officer, State agency, or director of any State agency.

(b) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the State, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

Section 95. Applicability. This Act takes priority over and supersedes any other State law or rule that appears to or purports to be in conflict with this Act.

Section 97. Severability. If any provision of this Act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the invalidity of that provision or application does not affect other provisions or applications of this Act that can be given effect without the invalid provision or application.

(410 ILCS 35/Act rep.)

Section 900. The Equitable Restrooms Act is repealed.

Section 905. The Illinois Human Rights Act is amended by changing Section 1-103 as follows:

(775 ILCS 5/1-103) (from Ch. 68, par. 1-103)

Sec. 1-103. General definitions. When used in this Act, unless the context requires otherwise, the term:

(A) Age. "Age" means the chronological age of a person who is at least 40 years old, except with regard to any practice described in Section 2-102, insofar as that practice concerns training or apprenticeship programs. In the case of training or apprenticeship programs, for the purposes of Section 2-102, "age" means the chronological age of a person who is 18 but not yet 40 years old.

(B) Aggrieved party. "Aggrieved party" means a person who is alleged or proved to have been injured by a civil rights violation or believes he or she will be injured by a civil rights violation under Article 3 that is about to occur.

(B-5) Arrest record. "Arrest record" means:

(1) an arrest not leading to a conviction;

(2) a juvenile record; or

(3) criminal history record information ordered expunged, sealed, or impounded under Section 5.2 of the Criminal Identification Act.

(C) Charge. "Charge" means an allegation filed with the Department by an aggrieved party or initiated by the Department under its authority.

(D) Civil rights violation. "Civil rights violation" includes and shall be limited to only those specific acts set forth in Sections 2-102, 2-103, 2-105, 3-102, 3-102.1, 3-103, 3-102.10, 3-104.1, 3-105, 3-105.1, 4-102, 4-103, 5-102, 5A-102, 6-101, 6-101.5, and 6-102 of this Act.

(E) Commission. "Commission" means the Human Rights Commission created by this Act.

(F) Complaint. "Complaint" means the formal pleading filed by the Department with the Commission following an investigation and finding of substantial evidence of a civil rights violation.

(G) Complainant. "Complainant" means a person including the Department who files a charge of civil rights violation with the Department or the Commission.

(G-5) Conviction record. "Conviction record" means information indicating that a person has been convicted of a felony, misdemeanor or other criminal offense, placed on probation, fined, imprisoned, or paroled pursuant to any law enforcement or military authority.

(H) Department. "Department" means the Department of Human Rights created by this Act.

(I) Disability.

(1) "Disability" means a determinable physical or mental characteristic of a person, including, but not limited to, a determinable physical characteristic which necessitates the person's use of a guide, hearing or support dog, the history of such characteristic, or the perception of such characteristic by the person complained against, which may result from disease, injury, congenital condition of birth or functional disorder and which characteristic:

(a) For purposes of Article 2, is unrelated to the person's ability to perform the duties of a particular job or position and, pursuant to Section 2-104 of this Act, a person's illegal use of drugs or alcohol is not a disability;

(b) For purposes of Article 3, is unrelated to the person's ability to acquire, rent, or maintain a housing accommodation;

(c) For purposes of Article 4, is unrelated to a person's ability to repay;

(d) For purposes of Article 5, is unrelated to a person's ability to utilize and benefit from a place of public accommodation;

(e) For purposes of Article 5, also includes any mental, psychological, or developmental disability, including autism spectrum disorders.

(2) Discrimination based on disability includes unlawful discrimination against an individual because of the individual's association with a person with a disability.

(J) Marital status. "Marital status" means the legal status of being married, single, separated, divorced, or widowed.

(J-1) Military status. "Military status" means a person's status on active duty in or status as a veteran of the armed forces of the United States, status as a current member or veteran of any reserve component of the armed forces of the United States, including the United States Army Reserve, United States Marine Corps Reserve, United States Navy Reserve, United States Air Force Reserve, and United States Coast Guard Reserve, or status as a current member or veteran of the Illinois Army National Guard or Illinois Air National Guard.

(K) National origin. "National origin" means the place in which a person or one of his or her ancestors was born.

(K-5) "Order of protection status" means a person's status as being a person protected under an order of protection issued pursuant to the Illinois Domestic Violence Act of 1986, Article 112A of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1963, the Stalking No Contact Order Act, or the Civil No Contact Order Act, or an order of protection issued by a court of another state.

(L) Person. "Person" includes one or more individuals, partnerships, associations or organizations, labor organizations, labor unions, joint apprenticeship committees, or union labor associations, corporations, the State of Illinois and its instrumentalities, political subdivisions, units of local government, legal representatives, trustees in bankruptcy or receivers.

(L-5) Pregnancy. "Pregnancy" means pregnancy, childbirth, or medical or common conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth.

(M) Public contract. "Public contract" includes every contract to which the State, any of its political subdivisions, or any municipal corporation is a party.

(M-5) Race. "Race" includes traits associated with race, including, but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles such as braids, locks, and twists.

(N) Religion. "Religion" includes all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, except that with respect to employers, for the purposes of Article 2, "religion" has the meaning ascribed to it in paragraph (F) of Section 2-101.

(O) Sex. "Sex" means the status of being male or female.

(O-1) Sexual orientation. "Sexual orientation" means actual or perceived heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality, or gender-related identity, whether or not traditionally associated with the person's designated sex at birth. "Sexual orientation" does not include a physical or sexual attraction to a minor by an adult.

(O-2) Reproductive Health Decisions. "Reproductive Health Decisions" means a person's decisions regarding the person's use of: contraception; fertility or sterilization care; assisted reproductive technologies; miscarriage management care; healthcare related to the continuation or termination of pregnancy; or prenatal, intranatal, or postnatal care.

(O-5) Source of income. "Source of income" means the lawful manner by which an individual supports himself or herself and his or her dependents.

(P) Unfavorable military discharge. "Unfavorable military discharge" includes discharges from the Armed Forces of the United States, their Reserve components, or any National Guard or Naval Militia which are classified as RE-3 or the equivalent thereof, but does not include those characterized as RE-4 or "Dishonorable".

(Q) Unlawful discrimination. "Unlawful discrimination" means discrimination against a person because of his or her actual or perceived: race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, age, sex, marital status, order of protection status, disability, military status, sexual orientation, pregnancy, reproductive health decisions, or unfavorable discharge from military service as those terms are defined in this Section.

(Source: P.A. 102-362, eff. 1-1-22; 102-419, eff. 1-1-22; 102-558, eff. 8-20-21; 102-813, eff. 5-13-22; 102-896, eff. 1-1-23; 102-1102, eff. 1-1-23; 103-154, eff. 6-30-23; 103-785, eff. 1-1-25.)