It’s 2018, and New York still hasn’t passed statewide protections for transgender people, after New York’s long-awaited transgender protection law GENDA (Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act) was voted down on Tuesday by a Republican-controlled state senate committee.

The bill has been introduced in every single legislative session since 2003, and has repeatedly passed in the New York state assembly, but not the state senate. New York’s only openly gay state senator, Brad Hoylman, tells them. that the Republican-controlled state senate hasn’t passed a single piece of LGBTQ-focused legislation since 2011, and that GOP legislators “treat LGBT issues like the third rail of politics.”

“They’re concerned about primaries in their districts and right-wing challengers,” says Hoylman, adding that Republican control of the New York state senate doesn’t actually represent the largely Democrat-leaning state.

“Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one, but Republicans control the senate because the lines have been gerrymandered. We have crazy-shaped districts drawn to capture every single Republican vote,” Hoylman says.

According to to the state’s Board of Elections data from 2016, the number of registered Democrats in New York was 5,792,497 — 62 percent of registered voters overall. Republicans only made up 30 percent of the state’s voters, at 2,731,688. Read more via them.