The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2026 State of Religious Liberty in the United States report uses rhetoric about “gender ideology” and religious freedom that risks legitimizing discrimination and harmful public policies targeting transgender people, according to DignityUSA. The group is the world’s oldest organization of Catholics working for justice, equality, and full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the church and society.

Released on February 17, the bishops’ annual report includes a section titled “Further Repudiation of Gender Ideology,” which frames legal recognition of transgender people as a threat to religious liberty in the United States.

“That claim suggests that protecting transgender people under the law somehow takes away someone else’s religious freedom,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA. “That simply is not true. Anti-discrimination laws set basic rules for how people are treated in public life. They don’t stop anyone from believing what they believe or practicing their faith.”

Catholic teaching on religious freedom affirms that every person must be free to seek truth and follow the dictates of conscience without coercion. The bishops’ report fails to apply that principle consistently when discussing transgender people and their rights.

The report points to the Supreme Court case United States v. Skrmetti as a major victory against what it calls “gender ideology.” But that characterization overstates what the Court actually decided. The ruling addressed a narrow constitutional question about whether a state could regulate certain medical treatments for minors. It did not issue a sweeping judgment about transgender people or their legal status.

Even so, the report’s celebratory framing echoes a troubling reality: courts are already using the reasoning in Skrmetti to justify broader restrictions on transgender people’s access to medical care. On March 10, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed West Virginia to exclude gender-affirming surgery for transgender adults from Medicaid coverage, citing Skrmetti repeatedly and suggesting that states may have a legitimate interest in encouraging people to “appreciate their sex.” This kind of reasoning opens the door to policies that deny transgender people medically necessary care while claiming those restrictions are neutral.

“The logic behind these policies is indefensible,” said Maxwell Kuzma, a transgender man and board member of DignityUSA. “They single out transgender people by targeting the medical care only we need, then pretend the discrimination is neutral. Calling that ‘freedom’ turns the idea of rights upside down. In practice, it means stripping transgender people of access to care while claiming it’s about protecting liberty.”

The bishops’ report repeatedly invokes the phrase “gender ideology,” a term that operates as a sweeping rhetorical label rather than a clear description of any identifiable movement. The phrase groups together a wide range of experiences, identities, and ideas about gender under a single ideological category, despite the absence of any unified program or organized movement that fits the description. In practice, this framing reduces the lives of transgender people to an abstract political concept to be argued about, rather than acknowledging them as real people whose experiences and dignity deserve to be taken seriously.

The report also frames the participation of transgender athletes as a major threat to women’s sports and describes gender-affirming medical care using language such as “mutilation.” Major medical organizations—including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics—recognize gender-affirming care as evidence-based treatment for gender dysphoria.

“Describing medically recognized treatments as ‘mutilation’ is not a neutral theological argument—it is inflammatory language that distorts the medical reality and fuels hostility toward transgender people,” said Kuzma. “When church leaders use rhetoric like this, it feeds a climate where transgender people are treated as threats or frauds. At a time when trans communities already face widespread discrimination and violence, that kind of language makes the situation even more dangerous.”

The report’s approach reflects a broader shift in which religious liberty is framed primarily as the freedom to resist legal recognition of LGBTQ people, rather than as a protection for the conscience and dignity of all individuals.

Transgender Catholics and their families are already part of the life of the church. When church leaders frame transgender existence primarily as a social or ideological threat, it sends a clear message that these members of the community are viewed with suspicion rather than care. That kind of rhetoric undermines trust and makes it far more difficult for transgender Catholics and their families to believe the church is willing to listen to them or accompany them in good faith.

At the same time, the language used in official church documents carries influence far beyond internal theological debates. When transgender people are consistently described as ideological problems rather than human beings, it shapes public narratives that normalize discrimination against them. In a political climate where transgender communities already face escalating hostility, that framing can help legitimize policies that strip away rights and restrict access to basic services, contributing to a broader environment in which harassment, exclusion, and even violence become easier to justify.