Update: KY legislature bans gender-affirming care for kids after last-minute swap

The Kentucky General Assembly voted Thursday to ban gender-affirming care for transgender kids as a part of an omnibus anti-LGBTQ bill, following a last-minute committee substitute.

The Senate vote was 30 to 7, with one Republican voting against it and one Democrat voting for Senate Bill 150. The bill now goes to Gov. Andy Beshear, who has indicated his opposition.

But even if Beshear vetoes the bill as expected, the legislature will return for two days later this month and could override that veto.

House Bill 470 passed the House two weeks ago as a ban on the prescription of puberty-blocking hormones, gender re-assignment surgery, and inpatient and outpatient gender-affirming hospital services for any Kentuckian under age 18, but the bill got hung up in the Senate this week when several GOP members expressed their concerns.

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans voted to dramatically scale back a bill that many in the party said went too far because it left trans kids with no health care options.

But Thursday, Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, and Rep. David Meade, R-Stanford, introduced an amended version of Senate Bill 150 that would do just that. It passed a hastily called House education committee, and less than an hour later was on the House floor, where it won near-unanimous Republican support, 75-22.

The two days before the veto period were the latest sign of disunity among Kentucky Republicans in a session marked by a raft of GOP legislation to combat “woke” issues. The final days of the legislature’s regular session have revealed division and infighting among the political majority as they grapple with how far to wade into national culture wars.

Easy passage in the Senate

Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Benton, successfully amended a similar bill just one night before to exclude prohibitions on puberty blockers for transgender youth. In a floor speech, Carroll said that he had heard of a young person who was born female that considered suicide when menstruation began.

“What would it hurt to allow doctors to have access to these puberty blockers to give these kids time to work through these issues that they face. What if we trust our doctors, as we do for every other sickness, to guide us through these things.”

“You’ve got one side pushing really hard, which is making the other side push back even harder. We’ve forgotten what’s important. My concern is for the children,” Carroll said. “... When are we going to get past all this extremism, all the radicalism?”

Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, the mother of a trans child who died by suicide in December, told her colleagues they’ve had time to learn the science and stances of the medical community. She reminded them, her child first testified against a ‘bathroom bill’ a decade ago.

“This is absolute, willful, intentional hate,” Berg said. “Hate for a small group of people that are the weakest and most vulnerable among us. ... What was your purpose in choosing to serve? Because if it was to help the least among us, you are failing miserably.”

Sen. Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, who has been in the Senate since 1989, called this vote a low point.

“We’re not perfect, but I have to think that everyone in this body is intelligent enough, is sensitive enough, is thoughtful enough, that they would not take unnecessarily their power and crush to the earth those who are already in great need,” Neal said. “I was going to stand up and say something like, ‘This is shameful.’

“I cannot tell you the rage I have in my body.”

Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, said that this bill was about the “issue of protecting children from potentially going down a course to destroy their lives and never being able to get it back.”

“Some think that’s a parental right, that you should be able to make that decision. I strongly disagree with that.”

Sen. Stephen Meredith, R-Leitchfield, pivoted the discussion toward the issue of abortion.

“I find it so hypocritical that people would condemn us for this legislation, but turn a blind eye to 50 years of Roe v. Wade that killed 63 million innocent babies, so don’t lecture me about caring for children when you support the murder of innocent children,” Meredith said. “It’s inexcusable and hypocritical.”

Sen. Gex Williams, R-Verona, implored Kentuckians to not be transgender.

“Be yourself. Be what your 30 or 40 trillion cells say that you are. That is what you are. Don’t let anyone else tell you that you’re really different from what your body is telling you (that) you are,” Williams said.

‘Trans kids are always going to be here’

Before the House Education Committee Thursday morning, Wise and Meade introduced an amendment to Senate Bill 150. The bill in its original form prohibits schools from requiring or recommending teachers use a trans student’s preferred pronouns, and required schools to notify parents when curriculum related to human sexuality was going to be taught.

On top of that, it now includes portions of House Bill 177, banning “any child regardless of grade level” from receiving presentation or instruction “studying or exploring gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.”

It also includes a provision potentially restricting transgender students’ use of school bathrooms. The bill requires that schools 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.

And, perhaps most notably, Wise’s amended bill revived earlier versions of House Bill 470 from Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, to enact an out right ban on all gender-affirming care for youth with gender dysphoria in Kentucky. It would outlaw the standard of care treatment for this population by outlawing gender reassignment surgery, the prescription of puberty blockers and hormones, and inpatient and outpatient gender-affirming hospital services for anyone under age 18.

When asked by Rep. Tina Bojanowski, D-Louisville, whether they consulted health care providers or families of trans Kentuckians, Meade said hastily that they had.

“I think that, as you saw in the testimony on the floor and in committee, there is evidence this is harmful to children,” Meade said, referencing people who testified in favor of Decker’s bill, most of whom were from out of state.

Doctors on behalf of the Kentucky Medical Association, the Kentucky chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Psychological Association testified in strong opposition to the bill.

“Our job is to protect children, and that’s what we’re doing here,” Meade added.

On the floor, Meade mentioned the he has in his possession a poll that indicated a majority of Kentuckians support the goals of the amended bill.

When asked to share the poll, Meade declined. He said it was a “private poll that came from somebody else who paid for it,” so he was not allowed to share it publicly yet. He said he would try, through the House GOP staff, to share it later.

A poll shared by the LGBTQ advocacy organization, the Fairness Campaign, found the opposite to be true.

Unlike HB 470 when it was first introduced, the bill as amended by the substitute does not explicitly place restrictions on mental health care for transgender youth.

The committee passed the amended omnibus bill, but not along party lines.

After voting no, Rep. Killian Timoney, R-Lexington, said, “You can’t throw a brick at a school without hitting the kid with an identity issue. I mean, that’s what schools are about, particularly middle and high.”

“I think that it’s more important to support kids through the process than it is to pass legislation on who they are,” Timoney added, saying his “no” vote was informed by his faith.

“I know it’s tied to people’s values,” he said, with tears beginning to form in his eyes. “I’m not going to comment on how my values might be different, but I just know that when I stand before God on my judgment day, he’s gonna say, ‘who did you love?’ And I’m gonna say ‘everybody.’”

Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, called the committee substitute a “cheap, 11th-hour” trick because “you cannot get this done any other way.”

Hartman, shouting, told the committee, “You are will have spent more time debating transgender children and their rights and their parents’ rights to obtain the life-saving medical care that they need than childhood poverty, than housing insecurity, than disaster relief, in this session combined.”

Mason Chernosky, a trans man, echoed Hartman’s complaints against the process by which the bill was changed on the last day before the veto break. He said that Democrats and LGBTQ advocates didn’t know about the committee meeting until mere moments before it began.

“Trans people are always going to be here. Trans kids are always going to be here. That is the message. I want people to hear that no matter what, we are going to live through this. We have lived through so much worse and we can live through this too,” Chernosky said.

Rep. Josie Raymond, D-Louisville, who voted against the original version of House Bill 470 and again voted no on Thursday in committee, said, through tears, “This harms kids in every single school in this commonwealth. If you don’t believe me, you just don’t know it. I’m embarrassed and I’m appalled, and I’m scared. And I vote no.”

Back and forth on the House floor

House Democrats – who often took several minutes each to speak against the bill, and nearly all held forth for a long time on the floor – commented on the legislation much more than their Republican counterparts.

Some of them attempted to scuttle the bill via parliamentary procedure.

Rep. Keturah Herron, D-Louisville, called a point of order expressing a grievance against the rushed process by which SB 150 was changed. She made a motion to lay the bill on the table, delaying it for further consideration. That failed 22-73, with only two Republicans joining the 20 House Democrats in the 100-member body.

House Democratic leaders Rep. Rachel Roberts, D-Newport, and Rep. Derrick Graham, D-Frankfort, both tried different avenues – Roberts tried to “divide the question” into separate bills, while Graham tried to get House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, to rule the committee substitute not germane to the original bill. Both failed.

Roberts criticized Republicans for creating a “bogeyman” in trans children.

“The bogeyman doesn’t exist. That is a lesson this body needs to learn. I don’t want to sit here, wasting our time on political point bogeymen for your re-election campaign while we harm real constituents,” Roberts said.

Rep. Lisa Willner, D-Louisville, was one of many Democrats who took several minutes on the House floor decrying the bill.

Willner said that she found a language change on the title of the bill to be fitting.

“The title used to ‘an act related to the protection of children.’ Quite rightly, that language has been removed. This is now just ‘an act relating to children.’ This act does relate to children, but it’s not about protecting them,” Willner said. “I thank you, at least, for that one bit of sincerity.”

Raymond, the Louisville representative, predicted that there would be an exodus of Kentuckians from the state due to the legislation

“This harms kids in every school in Kentucky. If you don’t think that’s true, you’re naive and you’re not listening… We’re going to lose our kids to suicide or to migration, and not jut the trans ones either. We’re going to lose the cis gender ones who say ‘Kentucky’s moving backwards, and fast.’”

George Brown Jr., D-Lexington, said that late on Wednesday night after the House’s contentious vote on Senate Bill 5, that a group of Republicans referred to the 18 Democratic members who voted against that bill as “derelicts” and “heretics,” and that they didn’t care about the children of the Commonwealth.

Rep. Daniel Grossberg, D-Louisville, shared that he struggled with his own development as a child. He hit puberty much later than average, at the age of 17, and once considered taking his life as a result.

He tried to add an amendment that would’ve required the Kentucky Department of Education to record the number of students who use different pronouns & number who’ve attempted or considered suicide. His motion to consider that amendment failed.

KY House votes on trans youth gender-affirming care ban. How did your rep. vote?