Tennessee lawmakers introduce bill to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth

Tennessee Republicans on Wednesday introduced a measure to prohibit transgender youth under 18 from accessing gender-affirming health care, stating the legislature has a responsibility to “protect the health and welfare of minors.”

The bill, titled the Protecting Children from Gender Mutilation Act, was introduced Wednesday by Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson and House Majority Leader William Lamberth, both of whom won reelection on Tuesday in the midterm elections.

Under the proposed measure, health care providers in Tennessee will be barred from providing gender-affirming medical care to minors “for the purpose of enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”

The measure includes exceptions for youth that require treatments like puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries for reasons other than the treatment of gender dysphoria or “mental condition, disorder, disability, or abnormality.”

The state legislature is set to meet next in January.

“Cultural forces from the left would like us to accept an alarming new myth; that gender is not a biological reality,” Lamberth wrote in an October op-ed in the Tennessean announcing his intent to introduce the bill.

Lamberth said he was working with Johnson and conservative podcaster and Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh.

Walsh has crusaded against gender-affirming medical care including puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries for transgender youth, accusing doctors of “mutilating” children and calling for penalties.

Social media posts from Walsh claiming that Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee “chemically castrates” minors went viral earlier this year, spurring Gov. Bill Lee (R) to call for an investigation into the hospital’s transgender clinic. Lee also won reelection on Tuesday.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has accused Walsh of misrepresenting facts about the care provided to young transgender patients. Last month, the hospital announced it would be pausing gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth for up to several months while it conducts a review.

Early last month, 60 Tennessee House Republicans signed onto a letter addressed to the hospital’s president and board of directors, calling the clinic’s practices “nothing less than abuse” and promising swift action from the state legislature.