As dozens of states pass anti-transgender laws, Colorado becomes a popular destination
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DENVER — Arlo Crimm’s plans to leave Casper, Wyoming, kicked into gear when the state’s Republican supermajority passed a slew of bills targeting transgender people in 2024, including requiring people to use the restroom aligned with their biological sex and banning discussions of gender identity in schools.
Crimm said he was harassed in bathrooms. He believes his gender presentation made it more difficult to find well-paying jobs.
Crimm, who lived in Casper with his partner and a friend, saved what he could from his $12-an-hour job as an office administrator and moved to Denver in January. He is currently couch-surfing.
“We planned the best we could, but I had to leave my partner and my found family temporarily in Wyoming so I could get us all to safety here,” said Crimm, who recently started working at a Jefferson County homeless shelter.
President Donald Trump has signed several executive orders targeting LGBTQ+ people since taking office. Crimm felt his only option was to move to a state which had protections at the local level, like Colorado.
Colorado has enacted several statewide protections for transgender people in the last five years, including anti-discrimination laws and the ability to change names or gender on state documents.
Since moving to Colorado, Crimm has attended LGBTQ+ support groups at the Center on Colfax and relied on friends who offer their couches for him to sleep on while he searches for permanent housing for his partner and former roommate, who he calls “found family.”
Crimm’s move from Wyoming to Colorado is part of a trend of transgender Americans and their families moving to states with more protections in place for LGBTQ+ people. The Child Welfare League of America has called attention to it. A 2023 survey from the progressive think tank Data For Progress found that more than 40% of transgender people ages 18 to 24 have considered moving away from states with anti-transgender laws.
The Trans Continental Pipeline, a Denver-based nonprofit that helps transgender people move to states or cities with more protections, said they have received 400 relocation requests since Trump’s reelection.
The organization has relocated 100 of the 400 in that time.
“I think it’s the fear of what could happen on the national level that’s driving people to come to Colorado,” said Keira Richards, executive director of the Trans Continental Pipeline.
The Human Rights Campaign reported that 26 states have passed anti-trans bills as of February 2025.
“People are scared. It feels like the walls are closing in on them,” said Keira Richards, the founder and executive director of the Trans Continental Pipeline.
“There's this new threat at the federal level that feels very real, very tangible and also very unknown.”
In a small backyard Transgender Day of Remembrance Ceremony in November 2023, Richards and three of her friends identified relocating people from areas with restrictive laws to areas with codified protections or larger LGBTQ+ populations as one of the transgender community’s biggest needs.
Richards, a 26-year-old Denver resident who grew up in Boulder, subsequently launched the Trans Continental Pipeline as a mutual aid project in April 2024.
Originally founded to help people from conservative states with anti-trans laws relocate to Colorado, the organization has since expanded its mission to assist individuals nationwide.
“Even if a state government doesn’t have protections in place, people may not be able to or want to leave their state, so we help them find a more accepting community where they can at least feel safe in public,” Richards said.
“There’s a difference between legislative and cultural safety,” she said.
Applicants wanting to relocate go through a four-step process.
First, they speak with someone in their preferred destination to decide if the area is right for them. Then, the applicants receive moving assistance in the form of either reimbursement grants, a driver or a private pilot to move them to their new home.
Richards said the nonprofit has helped people move to California, New York, Oregon, Illinois and Washington. It’s also helped relocate people from rural parts of Alabama to Alabama’s cities.
The nonprofit partners with Elevated Access, an Illinois-based network of volunteer pilots that fly patients seeking abortion or gender-affirming care around the country to obtain those resources.
Once a person has moved to their new home, they receive a month of temporary, free housing. Their final step is being integrated into their new community, which usually includes finding healthcare, support groups and friends.
Stefanie Newell, a 26-year-old Denver resident, said moving to Denver from her small, conservative hometown outside of San Antonio, Texas was “life-saving.” Newell connected with Richard when she moved to Denver in 2024. She now serves as a Trans Continental Pipeline board member to help others access the same safety and resources she did.
“LGBTQ people are a vulnerable population and it's nice when there's someone looking out for you, because a lot of times, there isn’t,” Newell said.
Newell attended an all-boys military school in Texas and said she had teachers recommend she attend conversion therapy, a practice of trying to force children into a different gender or sexuality than they identify with. The therapy is banned in 27 states, including Colorado.
Newell threw herself into school and church as a child, hoping to forget about her gender dysphoria. She attended the University of California, Los Angeles and studied sociology before moving back to her hometown in Texas at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But her hometown reminded her of her traumatic childhood and in 2024 she moved to Colorado to continue her transition in an area that felt safer.
“After moving here, I felt, for the first time, like my head was screwed on straight,” Newell said.
In her work with the Trans Continental Pipeline, Newell recently helped another transgender person relocate from her hometown to Colorado. The experience encouraged her to pursue full-time work helping people in her situation.
For now, Newell has several part-time online jobs, including writing, editing and live-streaming video games.
The pipeline has set up on-the-ground connections with LGBTQ+ mutual aid groups in Chicago, New York City, Seattle and Portland, Oregon for people wanting to relocate to those cities as well.
Richards said the nonprofit’s goal is to eventually cease to exist because she hopes it won’t need to if — or when — anti-trans legislation stop. But she fears that version of the world isn’t coming anytime soon.
“There is an LGBTQ migrant crisis right now and we’re just doing what we can to slap a band-aid on it,” Richards said.
“As long as people aren’t allowed to live as their authentic selves and don’t have the liberty to do so in the states that they're in, relocation is going to keep happening.”
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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