BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – Amid mounting pressure from Republicans, a bill banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth in Louisiana that was narrowly killed by a committee has been resurrected legislature last week.
In a rare move, the Senate voted to refer the controversial bill back to a different committee, giving it a second chance at life. The measure, which was rejected by the Senate Health and Welfare Committee last week, received statewide and national attention after a Republican cast the tie-breaking vote to kill the bill.
Sen. Fred Mills, the Republican chairman of the Health and Welfare Committee who cast the deciding vote last week, told his colleagues on the chamber Thursday that he opposed reviving the bill, and adding that if lawmakers respect the committee’s majority vote, they will uphold the decision. But the Senate voted 26-11, along party lines, with the exception of Mills, to recommit the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is scheduled to meet Friday afternoon.
The bill has already passed the House. If the Senate Judiciary Committee advances the bill, it will move to the full Senate for debate. After final approval, the measure would be sent to the desk of Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who opposes the bill. Edwards has not said whether he would veto it.
“You do what you have to do,” Mills told lawmakers Thursday. “We can talk about the merits of the bill for a long period of time, and I know people say they want (the bill) to be heard in the House. I do understand that. But I will tell you that this committee did a great job.”
Tensions over the legislation reached a boiling point last week after Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is a GOP gubernatorial candidate this year, and the Louisiana Republican Party pressured lawmakers to resurrect the proposed ban of gender affirmation and approve it.
Additionally, anti-transgender activists took to social media, including conservative political commentator Matt Walsh, who tweeted to his nearly 2 million followers that Mills would regret his decision and that it is “the biggest mistake of his career politics”.
Mills, who sided with Democrats in the committee vote, has repeatedly said he stands by his decision.
“As I have always done in my 16 years as a legislator, I relied on science and data and not on political or social pressures,” Mills, a pharmacist from rural Louisiana, said last week. “I prioritized the value of the doctor-patient relationship, I trust that the doctors in Louisiana know better than I do about how to treat these children, and I decided that this is a unique subset of medical needs that is so small of the whole population that doesn’t should remove approved and appropriate medicinal options”.
Opponents of the Louisiana bill argue that gender-affirming care, which is supported by every major medical organization, can save a person’s life with gender dysphoria — distress over gender identity that does not match the sex assigned to a person. Research suggests that transgender children and adults are prone to stress, depression and suicidal thoughts. Advocates for the LGBTQ+ community fear that without care, transgender children could face particularly high risks.
According to a Louisiana Department of Health report, between 2017 and 2021 only a few dozen minors received gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy and puberty blockers. These data only took into account youth enrolled in Medicaid. Additionally, the report found that no gender-affirming surgeries were performed on Medicaid-enrolled minors during that time period.
Currently, children in Louisiana need parental permission to receive any gender-affirming health care before their 18th birthday.
Proponents of the legislation argue that the proposed bans would protect children from life-altering medical procedures until they are mature enough to make such serious decisions.
So far, at least 18 states have enacted laws restricting or banning care for gender-affirming minors, and all three states bordering Louisiana have enacted bans or are poised to do so.
The ban in Arkansas, the first state to ban such care, has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge. Mississippi’s governor signed a ban in February. The governor of Texas has said he will sign a ban lawmakers have sent him.
