Transaffirmative Psychological Practice Is Ethical Practice: Leveraging the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct in Practice and Advocacy

By mid-2025, 859 antitransgender and gender diverse (TGD) bills have been introduced in 49 U.S. states (https://translegislation.com/). These pieces of legislation regulate the actions of TGD people in public spaces, encroach on private health care interactions, and seek to control health care providers’ clinical decision making. These acts have caused significant distress for TGD clients and their families, as well as the health care providers who care for them, and this climate prompted the human rights campaign to declare a national state of emergency for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people in June 2023. For psychologists, anti-TGD legislation may create conflicts between state law and ethical practice. These conflicts pose the potential to undermine psychologists’ ability to adhere to evidence-based practice recommendations when serving TGD people. In this commentary, we describe how the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (American Psychological Association [APA], 2017a) equips professionals to affirm their commitment to providing evidence-based, effective care for TGD clients amid anti-TGD legislation. We also highlight the American Psychological Association’s (APA, 2024) Policy Statement affirming evidence-based, inclusive care for TGD people as an advocacy tool. Finally, in alignment with counseling psychology values of advocacy and liberation, we conclude by offering recommendations for psychologists to engage in social justice advocacy alongside TGD communities to defend trans rights (including the right to access evidence-based care) and to continue to support broad understanding of TGD-affirmative psychological practice as ethical practice, grounded in decades of research.