More States Are Passing Laws Offering Vigilantes Cash to Report Targeted Groups

State and city legislators across the U.S. are passing laws that offer private citizens the option to sue for cash if they catch a trans person using a bathroom aligned with their gender identity, someone providing or receiving an abortion, or a librarian offering inclusive books. The trend is already showing up in the 2025 legislative session after starting four years ago.

Texas leads the way in the number and scope of so-called bounty laws, creating some of the first of their kind. In 2021, Texas passed Senate Bill 8, a law that bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected (often before one month into pregnancy) but does not make it a crime. Instead, the law is enforced by allowing private citizens to file a civil lawsuit against anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion. The law instructs courts to award plaintiffs at least $10,000 from defendants — abortion providers as well as anyone who helps the abortion-seeker with transportation or funding — in damages. In the first month after the law was implemented, abortions in Texas fell by 50% compared to the same time the previous year.

Texas lawmakers have expanded this concept in other arenas, including to drag performances with House Bill 4378, a bill they have tried to pass in the past and have refiled for the 2025 session. Under the law, any minor who witnesses a drag performance could sue the performer and anyone who promoted or facilitated the performance for $5,000. Bill critics fear that laws targeting drag performers could be applied to any transgender person in any setting, as the bill targets any performer who “exhibits a gender that is different than the performer’s gender recorded at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers.”

“We’ve seen two trends in recent years: Queer people have experienced increasing restrictions on private decisions, private actions, and private spaces as well as encouraging vigilante enforcement of some of the Texas Legislature’s worst ideas,” Johnathan Gooch, communications director of Equality Texas, an organization that promotes LGBTQIA+ equality in Texas, said in an email. “Another place we’ve seen this type of aggressive citizen policing tactics is with the resurgence of bathroom bans.”

Odessa, Texas, was the first city in the U.S. to pass a law with a financial incentive for turning in anyone who uses a public bathroom (or other gendered facility such as a locker room) that doesn’t align with the biological sex on their original birth certificate. As of November 2024, any individual can sue that facility user to pay them “statutory damages in an amount of not less than $10,000 for each violation of this ordinance,” plus legal costs of bringing the suit. The pursuant does not need to prove that the person using the facility harmed them in any way, just that the person entered the facility.

More bounty laws have been pre-filed in the Texas Legislature ahead of the Jan. 14 session state date. “We’ve seen this vigilante spirit reflected in HB239, a new bathroom ban that encourages private individuals to report to the Attorney General when they spot a trans person going to pee,” Gooch said of the 2025 session. In addition, Senate Bills 115 and 116 would allow lawsuits against doctors for providing gender-affirming care.

“Deputizing private citizens to police marginalized groups is especially dangerous in a political climate where rhetoric around trans issues is consistently degrading and dehumanizing,” Gooch said. “We know that dangerous rhetoric from anti-trans politicians is not only having an impact on the mental health of trans people but also their life expectancy. Violence and discrimination against trans people continues to escalate across the state of Texas and the nation.”

Gabriel Arkles, the co-interim legal director of Advocates for Trans Equality, said in an email that most people don’t care whether a trans person is using the same restroom as them.

But when lawmakers try to “whip up a panic over trans existence,” and laws offer money to people for complaining about trans people, Arkles said, “that creates a more dangerous environment — not just for trans people, but for anyone who is perceived as not matching gender norms.”

And with the public involved in enforcing the law, Arkles said the results are less predictable.

“As politicians’ prejudice transitions from rhetoric to government-sanctioned anti-trans vigilantism, we will certainly see violence increase,” Gooch said. “Trans people will pay the cost with their lives.”

Republican lawmakers in Kansas, who have more seats in the legislature after the 2024 election, plan to file a bill in 2025 that they attempted to pass in 2023 and 2024 that would ban gender-affirming care for minors. The bill includes a provision that would allow parents of minors who received gender-affirming care to sue the medical provider for damages. A similar law was passed in Arkansas in 2023.

Laws allowing civil action are similarly targeting abortion. In Texas, legislators have pre-filed a bill for the 2025 session that would allow civil action for $10,000 in damages against anyone who funds, distributes, or uses medication that causes abortion. A law passed in 2024 in Tennessee allows the biological parents or grandparents of an aborted fetus to receive damages from any person who helped a pregnant minor get an abortion. In 2022, Idaho passed Senate Bill 1309, what the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho calls “a Texas-style copycat that deputizes private citizens to bring lawsuits against health care providers who perform an abortion after six weeks in pregnancy.” The law allows anyone genetically related to the aborted fetus to sue the provider, who would have to pay $20,000.

“Even in a sexual assault case, if there were five siblings of an assaulter and a provider provided an abortion for the survivor, that provider could face five different $20,000 lawsuits — minimum — for providing that abortion,” explained Mistie DelliCarpini-Tolman, Idaho state director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates.

“This is having a chilling effect among providers in Idaho,” she said. “What provider wants to risk not only the criminal penalty that we have in our near-total abortion ban, but also civil penalties that could essentially bankrupt their practice and prevent them from being able to provide care for all their other patients?”

DelliCarpini-Tolman said this fear for health care professionals from Idaho’s many extreme anti-abortion laws has caused 22% of Idaho’s practicing obstetricians to leave the state. “We have only half of our maternal fetal medicine doctor experts left, so these bills are eroding not just safety nets for youth, but they’re creating a health care crisis in our state that is going to take years to recover,” she said. “And unfortunately, I see it only getting worse before it gets better. We need to see some big change in Idaho, and we need to see it soon.”

Bounty laws also target librarians and teachers. Idaho passed House Bill 710 in April 2024 that allows any minor, parent, or legal guardian to receive $250 plus any damages if any representative of a school or public library promotes, gives, or makes available any “obscene” books or other material. The law’s definition of obscenity includes “any act of … homosexuality.” The law also includes any material “harmful to minors,” left open to interpretation. In Tennessee, parents can bring civil suits against school employees who don’t inform them of their child using a new name or pronouns as of 2024.

These bounty laws echo the disturbing history of bounty hunting in the U.S. From 1675 to 1885, more than 100 local colonial, state, and local governments offered “scalp bounties,” cash, or land in exchange for the scalps of murdered Native American adults or children. In 1793, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which authorized bounty hunters to find and return enslaved people who had escaped traffickers’ imprisonment. Today’s bills also target marginalized communities.

“The number one thing I recommend to folks is to get involved with local trans-led organizations. Whether you’re trans or not, you can support the work,” Arkles said. “So much is changing so quickly, so being plugged into local networks can make a big difference.”

Arkles recommended signing up for action alerts, attending legislative hearings or protests, and donating or fundraising toward action efforts.

“This pattern we’re seeing of deputizing citizens to spy on each other should be a huge concern to everyone across the nation, not just in Idaho.” DelliCarpini-Tolman said.

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