“This year, we had the death of Pauly Likens, who was 14, the youngest [transgender] victim we’ve ever recorded,” says Dr. Shoshana Goldberg. “We see many victims misgendered and deadening by authorities, and reporting what emerged this year is not surprising. What is unsurprising and heartbreaking is that we just see the same things happen. Even as while the numbers may change from year to year, the same trends continue to emerge.”

Goldberg is the director of public education and research at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the educational arm of the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization. Earlier today, one day before Transgender Day of Remembrance, which memorializes those trans people who have lost their lives to murder or suicide, the foundation released a report detailing the extent of violence directed against members of the transgender and gender-nonconforming communities in the United States.

The statistics are, unsurprisingly, grim.

The “Epidemic of Violence” report provides context for how transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals are targeted for physical violence.

Since it began compiling statistics on such violence in 2013, the HRC Foundation has identified at least 372 transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals who lost their lives to second-party violence.  In the year since the 2023 Transgender Day of Remembrance, HRC has identified at least 36 individuals who have been killed, 30 of whom lost their lives in the current calendar year.

The designation “at least” is used to note that many transgender people are misgendered or “deadnamed” by police, prosecutors, media, even family members, and may have their deaths misreported or not covered at all by media outlets. So the actual death toll may be higher.

Additionally, misgendering or “deadnaming” a victim can make it harder for law enforcement to identify victims or close cases involving transgender victims, as potential sources of information may only have known the victim as a transgender person, and not by their “dead name” or assigned sex at birth.

“Year over year we see the same trends emerge,” Goldberg tells me during our Zoom call. “The vast majority of victims are trans women, particularly black trans women. The vast majority of victims are young. The vast majority are killed with a gun.”

Some statistics.

Since 2013, 84% of transgender, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming people were people of color with over 68% being Black and nearly 15% being Hispanic.

In the past twelve months, 74% of victims were people of color, with 60% being black and 11% being Hispanic. 

Transgender women are the most likely to be impacted by fatal violence, comprising nearly 83% of all victims of fatal anti-trans violence since 2013 and 77% in the past 12 months.

Trans women of color comprised 73% of all murder victims since 2013 and 60% of all victims in the past year. Black transgender women, specifically, comprised 60% of all murder victims since 2013, and nearly 49% of victims in the past year.

The age of victims of anti-trans violence is relatively young, with nearly 75% of deaths since 2013, and more than half of all deaths in the past 12 months occurring to individuals under the age of 35.

Based on those who died since 2013, the average age of victims at the time of their death is 30.

Anti-transgender violence is also not limited to a specific geographic region, with cases of murders being recorded in 199 cities and towns across 41 states, territories, and the District of Columbia.

But two-thirds of all victims were killed in just ten states: Texas, Florida, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Maryland, and North Carolina.

Texas, which had 37 victims, and Florida, which had 33 victims, each comprised nearly 10% of all people killed during that time period.

Goldberg tells me it is impossible to ignore transphobia and anti-trans stigma when examining violence directed against trans individuals.

“We have seen over 120 anti-LGBT bills pass in the last two years, the vast majority of which are targeting trans youth, attacking whether they can go to the bathroom, whether they can access medical care, what they can learn about at school, what they can call themselves on their records,” she says. “Those laws not only serve to keep LGBT folks and trans people out of daily life, they also perpetuate and often are accompanied by really harmful and scary rhetoric.

“Talking about trans people as violent, as risky, as a danger to society, relies on all the worst tropes that we’ve been seeing come up year over year since the 1970s with Anita Bryant, or the 1950s with the ‘Lavender Scare.'”

Goldberg says other factors, apart from anti-trans animus, contribute to putting trans individuals’ lives at risk. 

“Trans people are far more likely to experience physical violence and harassment,” she says. “Trans students are bullied at far higher rates than cis students, and even than queer or LGBQ students.

“We also see that many trans folks are kept out of the formal economy. They experience poverty, homelessness, housing instability. Some are engaging in sex work, which places people at increased risk for violence.”

“The hate towards transgender and gender expansive community members is fueled by disinformation, rhetoric and ideology that treats our community as political pawns, ignoring the fact that we deserve the opportunity to live our lives fully without fear of harm or death,” Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for HRC’s Transgender Justice Initiative, said in an email statement.

“Over half of the victims reported were Black trans women, a disturbing reality that reflects the trend of violence that continues to plague our community, which disproportionately faces racism, misogynoir, sexism, transphobia and a myriad of other societal issues.”

Even though Texas and Florida — two of the states with the most “regressive anti-trans policies on the books,” says Goldberg — have the highest numbers of transgender victims, blue states, such as Illinois, California, and Maryland, aren’t immune to similar violence. 

“This year alone, Minnesota recorded its first two cases of fatal violence,” says Goldberg. “And this is a state that has been very open to trans folks. In fact, it is a ‘sanctuary state’ for trans youth. So I think that’s something that should not be overlooked.”

According to HRC’s data, the relationship between transgender victims and their killers is often unknown or unclear in many cases. The killer was never identified in more than 1 in 3 deaths since 2013.

When an assailant was identified, 23% of cases involved a killer whom the victim was not acquainted with, while another 26% of cases saw trans individuals killed by an intimate partner, and 9% involved a murder committed by a friend or family member.

Guns play a major role in fatal killings of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals. In fact, it is the weapon of choice in nearly 7 in 10 fatalities since 2013.

“The contribution of gun violence is something that cannot be overlooked,” Goldberg says. “Many of the states in which there were higher rates of gun violence against trans people are also states that have more lax gun laws, and have experienced increases in gun-related homicides and suicides in the general population overall. So where there’s more access to guns, there’s more deaths by guns.”

Tragically, anti-transgender violence is often unresolved, and justice for victims is often fleeting.

Since 2013, 4 in 10 cases involving a trans murder victim have not generated a single arrest, even in cases where a suspect has been named.

In the 58% of cases where an arrest has been made, fewer than half — 28% of murders overall — have ended with a named killer being convicted and serving jail time. No officer has been charged in any police-involved shootings of trans individuals.

Despite the disheartening statistics regarding anti-trans violence, Goldberg says there are signs of hope in terms of how such cases are being treated by police and the media.

“We’re seeing the amount of people who are misgendered and deadnamed going down, which suggests that reporters and law enforcement are getting better at discussing this. It’s a small silver lining, but is, to me, indicative of the fact that we’re continuing to see more and more people understand what it means to be trans, and understand how to talk about this community in a way that is respectful and honoring them.”

Goldberg says there is also “faster turnaround with perpetrators being arrested, even as we are still seeing far too often perpetrators enter into plea deals or sentenced under lesser crimes than murder. We saw that just this past week with Megan Riley Lewis, where the person who killed her was a food delivery driver and pled down to a lesser charge.”

The HRC Foundation released a second report on “Dismantling a Culture of Violence,” which highlights the determinants of the anti-trans violence epidemic and provides steps on how allies can make the world safer for trans and gender-nonconforming individuals. Goldberg notes there are things that individuals can do to make trans people feel more accepted and less hopeless.

“At an individual level, the best way to support the trans people in your life is to believe them and affirm them,” Goldberg said. “When they come out to you, use the correct name, use the correct pronouns, refer to them as the way that they wish to be referred to, and honor their identity. So just that simple act of allyship, just letting them be who they are, is a good way to show support.

“And, as an ally, if you hear somebody making a transphobic comment, speak up. If you hear somebody spreading disinformation or misinformation about gender-affirming care, push back.

“The more that you can make sure that you’re one of those people, the more that we can help to kind of counteract and disrupt these systems of transphobia,” she continues. “It’s not going to solve what can happen at the presidential level — where we don’t know what’s going to happen yet — but it can at least make sure that the trans people in your life know that they’ll be safe with you.”

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