LGBT Americans Are Disappearing From Federal Data

Data on sexual orientation and gender identity play a crucial role in helping us understand the lives and experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities.

But on the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term, he signed an executive order declaring that transgender, nonbinary, and intersex identities would no longer be recognized by the federal government.

Almost immediately, federal agencies began stripping gender identity questions— along with several other data points related to LGBT communities—from a wide range of federal data collections.

More than a year later, researchers at the Williams Institute, a public policy research center at the UCLA School of Law, have taken a close look at what was removed and how extensive the changes were.

In a new report, they found that at least one mention of sexual orientation or gender identity has been eliminated from roughly 360 federal data collections.

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The amended data sets include major national surveys such as the American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, as well as program monitoring systems, federally funded research projects, and administrative records. All had previously included questions about sexual orientation or gender identity in some form.

The scale of the rollback is striking. About 94% of the removed questions were about gender identity, and more than 60 data sets also dropped questions about sexual orientation. Most of the changes were made through the Office of Management and Budget, sidestepping public notice and comment.

The result is more than just a bureaucratic shift. By removing these measures, the government has made it significantly harder for researchers, policymakers, and advocates to track the well-being, needs, and disparities affecting LGBT people.