Tennessee May Ban All Gender Affirming Care for Youth

Measures targeting trans people in red states such as TN show no signs of lessening after the US midterms.

by Evan Urquhart

A Tennessee bill has been introduced that would ban puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and all other medical interventions for gender dysphoric youth under 18. The bill is not yet law, but seems like it has a good chance of passing in the deep red state. According to the Hill (a mainstream news site that focuses on politics and policy), the TN bill is sponsored by the Majority Leaders of both chambers of the state legislature. Governor Bill Lee seems unlikely to stand in opposition to the bill, if it passes in the state Senate and House.

You can clearly see the fingerprints of the GOP’s vicious anti-trans smear campaign in the text of the bill. It uses the extreme sounding language of mutilation to refer to drugs like puberty blockers that are acknowledged in the text of the bill itself to be perfectly safe for all uses other than gender-affirming care.

It remains to be seen if a state like Tennessee can legally ban a mainstream, evidence-based treatment due solely to unfounded bias against trans people in the US. The case of Roe v Wade, which enshrined a right to privacy in medical decisions, would likely have been a key precedent for the constitutional issues at play. Because Roe was stricken down by the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court, it’s unclear whether any right to access evidence based treatments, in consultation with a patient’s doctor (and, for youth, only with parental consent), still exists in the US in any form. The ACLU, and other legal groups, remain invested in the effort to preserve this fundamental right.