2025 Legislative Report and Scorecard

Despite Indiana’s low voter turnout, Senate Bill 10 will make voting even more difficult for many Hoosiers. One of the most affected groups is college students. SB 10 no longer allows Indiana’s public university or college IDs to be used as voting identification. This places an unnecessary and unjust burden on students who may not have another accepted form of government ID. SB 10 will also purge eligible voters from the polls and disproportionately impact Hoosiers of color and naturalized citizens.  

Thanks to the thousands of Hoosiers who spoke out about this bill, SB 289 was significantly amended. But it remained a bad, unnecessary bill.  

SB 289 prohibits state agencies, public school districts, and public colleges and universities from taking any action against or in favor of an employee, student, or applicant for licensing based on the person’s race, religion, color, sex, national origin, or ancestry. Once in effect, the law will allow scholarships for specific groups of college students to continue so long as they are funded by private dollars. The bill also rescinds an Indiana law mandating diversity committees at public colleges and universities.   

All students deserve to receive sexual health education that is inclusive and accurate. SB 442 politicizes the issue. It requires that any instruction and learning materials used for “instruction on human sexuality” for grades 4-12 be approved by the local school board once, and then approved again if the materials change. It also mandates the public school post all relevant curriculum information publicly on their website and send notices to parents directing them to this posting, which must include information about the gender of the instructor and whether the class will be co-ed.  

SB 442 was also amended to require that sex education courses include an anti-abortion propaganda video produced by an advocacy group—not doctors. An additional last-minute amendment does require that any such video be medically accurate. 

Indiana lawmakers continued their attacks on transgender Hoosiers during this legislative session with House Bill 1041. It prohibits transgender women from participating in women’s sports at public and private colleges – expanding Indiana’s current K-12 ban. In addition, the bill opens up Indiana colleges to lawsuits by people who suspect that a transgender woman is participating in violation of the ban.   

Lawmakers passed this bill despite changes at the federal level and the NCAA that already banned transgender women from collegiate sports.  

Sports bans are part of a broader effort to exclude transgender people from public life. These policies are framed as “protecting women,” but they send a message to transgender Hoosiers that they don’t belong. And they can be used to harass and intimidate women athletes who are incorrectly presumed to be transgender.  

One bright spot in an otherwise dim legislative session was the passage of HB 1167, which decriminalizes fentanyl test strips and other safety devices. Previously, test strips were considered drug paraphernalia, which meant that community members who used them to prevent overdose deaths could be charged with a crime. This is a commonsense reform that will save lives.  

HB 1393 blurs the line between federal and local responsibility. It requires sheriffs and other law enforcement officers who have probable cause to suspect that someone who is being processed into a jail or other detention facility is in the country without permission of federal immigration authorities to report that person to federal officials. While this bill was amended to take rank and file police officers out of the mandated process, it will burden already overcrowded jails and cause more profiling of Hoosiers based on race, appearance, and English proficiency. By redirecting local resources, this bill also makes Hoosiers less safe.