Governing During a Culture War: Religion and Local Government Officials’ Attitudes Toward Transgender Rights Policies in the United States

As battles over transgender rights play out at the local level, this study offers the first large-scale analysis of religion and U.S. local government officials’ views on key transgender rights policies. Drawing on our 2023 national probability sample of U.S. municipal, county, and school district officials, we examine officials’ attitudes toward policies related to restroom access and gender markers on driver's licenses. We find that religious affiliation, religiosity, biblical literalism, and Christian nationalism are significantly associated with officials’ opposition to transgender rights policies. Other attributes, such as party identification, age, gender, and sexual orientation, are also linked to officials’ policy views. Our findings underscore how certain religious affiliations, behaviors, and beliefs are associated with resistance to transgender rights in local communities, offering new insights into the relevance of religion to today's culture wars. The findings also hold implications for street-level bureaucracy theory.