After blowback, KY Senate to consider pared-down bill on gender transition for minors

Tessa Duvall, Austin Horn
·6 min read
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A late night amendment proposed in the Senate would dramatically scale back the limitations placed on transgender youth, their families and health care providers by the controversial House Bill 470.

Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Benton, filed an amendment on Tuesday night that would roll back a proposed ban on medication, puberty blockers in particular, commonly provided to transgender youth.

House Bill 470, sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, passed the House as a ban on most all “gender transition services,” including surgery, puberty blockers, and hormones but became an omnibus, sweeping anti-trans bill in a committee substitute.

“When all is said and done, when you get away from all the noise surrounding these issues, it’s about those kids… We have got to make sure that the services are there to help them get through what they’re going through. I don’t care about any of the other issues, this decision was made to make sure that those kids had some options and that doctors were going to be comfortable treating them without all the fear that (HB) 470 portrayed,” Carroll told the Herald-Leader after filing the amendment.

Carroll’s amendment came roughly 12 hours after a contentious Families and Children Committee meeting in which he and three other GOP Senators expressed their displeasure with facets of Decker’s bill. It would cut almost 30 pages from Decker’s bill. The amendment still bans surgery for minors with gender dysphoria, and limits medication only to “reversible puberty-blocking drugs” with parental consent.

Gender dysphoria, according to the American Psychiatric Association, refers to “psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity.”

Still, Carroll’s amendment would leave intact other provisions that Democrats and LGBTQ-rights activists have denounced as problematic, including guidance around student pronouns, gender identity and bathroom policy.

One of the most controversial provisions of Decker’s proposed bill was the complete ban on medications assisting in gender transition for minors. Carroll’s amendment would place heavy restrictions on those treatments, but wouldn’t ban them.

“The idea is for there to be options for kids that are going through this,” Carroll said.

The amendment would limit nonsurgical medical treatments by ensuring that:

  • A parent or guardian provides notarized consent

  • The child must be medically diagnosed with gender dysphoria

  • The treatment is provided by a licensed physician who is “appropriately trained and experienced” in providing similar treatments

  • “Cross-sex hormones” including testosterone and estrogen are banned

  • Mental health care “that promote(s) gender transition” is banned, but mental health care that “address(es) a person’s sex or gender” is allowed

  • Treatments “meet evidence-based medical standards of care for the treatment of children with gender dysphoria”

Carroll, echoing statements made during committee, said that he thought the original House Bill 470 – the part that banned puberty blockers as well as surgery – was “harsh” and that some of it was “unnecessary.”

The amendment was a simpler way for Republicans to accomplish “what we need to do” without being as controversial, he said.

“The idea is to just to make sure that kids have services available – the mental health and some type of physical treatment that would not be irreversible. That’s the idea. The other stuff – the surgeries, the cross-sex hormones – it doesn’t allow. It will give a family and give a child time to really think through this through counseling or treatment to make sure that’s the right decision, then when they turn 18 It’s their call.”

Carroll’s bill did not touch many controversial provisions added onto House Bill 470 in a committee substitute on Tuesday. Those include provisions stating that:

  • School districts cannot require personnel or students to use the pronouns of a student if they don’t align with their biological sex, a measure originally put forth in Senate Bill 150 from Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville.

  • No student, regardless of their age, can see a presentation or curriculum from the school about “studying or exploring gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation,” which was a part of Rep. Shane Baker, R-Somerset, House Bill 177.

  • Schools shall develop a bathroom policy that protects students’ “privacy rights” as outlined in a section that condemns allowing trans students to use a bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. That section does not mandate that schools or districts ban trans students from using a bathroom that corresponds with their identity, but strongly suggests they should.

Carroll’s amendment was filed after a GOP caucus meeting that lasted about three hours.

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said they discussed a lot of bills, including HB 470, weighing what they could pass given the time limitations and anticipating what Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat up for re-election this year, might veto.

“That was not the sole and exclusive bill that was discussed in there, but there was a lot of discussion,” Stivers said. “There’ll be something acted upon tomorrow.”

Carroll said he was unsure about the level of support for his amendment, but echoed Stivers by adding that “a lot of discussion” is taking place around the issue.

Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer said on Wednesday morning that he “had no idea” what to expect regarding changes to HB 470.

“We’re working through multiple options on that bill,” Thayer said.

“There are no absolutes in this issue,” Carrol said. “There’s statistics, there’s personal experiences on both sides of this that help people to form their opinions, and the data is just simply not there on the best way to approach this. But the only thing that matters is those kids.”

Two more floor amendments

Even later into the night, two Senate members proposed floor amendments that sought to make the same changes as Carroll’s, but add back in some provisions from Decker’s original bill.

Sen. Gex Williams, R-Verona, filed an amendment that added back a section relating to statutes of limitation on suing a doctor for personal injury related to gender transition. The statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit against a health care provider suspected of violating that law would span 30 years.

An amendment from Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, includes the changes to Carroll’s amendment proposed by Williams, but changes some wording around which medications are allowed. That change explicitly allows for U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs, as well as “any other drug used to delay or suppress pubertal development.”

‘A bridge too far.’ Some in KY GOP raise concerns, but omnibus anti-trans bill advances