Governor Andy Beshear's Action on LGBTQ+ Legislation

In his official veto message, Governor Beshear asserted that Senate Bill 150 permitted excessive governmental interference in individual medical matters, arguing that it unjustly stripped away the autonomy of parents to determine healthcare choices for their offspring.

Furthermore, he elaborated that enhancing the availability of gender-affirming care represented a crucial method for improving well-being results within the transgender community. He additionally warned that Senate Bill 150 was poised to trigger a rise in self-harm incidents among Kentucky's young people, explaining that it was for these critical considerations he was exercising his power to veto Senate Bill 150.

Reacting to this decision, Cathryn Oakley, who serves as HRC's State Legislative Director and Senior Counsel, issued the subsequent declaration:

Cathryn Oakley, HRC's State Legislative Director and Senior Counsel, expressed profound appreciation for Governor Beshear's vetoing of this prejudicial statute, which she noted was hastily advanced through the legislature during the waning moments of the sessions. She characterized the legislative measure as merely a dire and callous endeavor by radical lawmakers in Kentucky, designed to brand, ostracize, and obliterate the LGBTQ+ community, especially transgender young people. Oakley asserted that such politicians possessed no business interjecting themselves into discussions among medical professionals, guardians, and transgender adolescents concerning gender-affirming medical support, adding that they similarly had no standing inside a junior high lavatory cubicle. She warned that the bill possessed the potential to intimidate transgender youth within educational institutions, in healthcare facilities, and could even jeopardize their safety within their own homes. In contrast, Oakley further contrasted this by noting that Governor Beshear had listened to the appeals of transgender children, their families, and medical experts, opting instead to address transgender youngsters with esteem and reverence. Concluding her remarks, she emphatically implored the Kentucky legislature to sustain the governor's veto and cease these prejudicial assaults on at-risk youth.

During the concluding ordinary day of the legislative sitting, through a flagrant, last-minute maneuver, radical legislators expedited an amended iteration of Senate Bill 150 through the lower house. Within the rapidly convened House Education Committee, they eliminated the opportunity for further expert input and failed to grant representatives sufficient opportunity and prior awareness to review the fresh legislation before presenting it for a vote. Specifically, this proposed measure aimed to:

• Prohibit Gender-Affirming Medical Services: This proposed legislation would forbid transgender adolescents from obtaining standard-of-care, developmentally suitable healthcare services—treatment provided following thorough deliberation involving the adolescent's guardians and physicians. Furthermore, it would compel medical practitioners to reverse transition for transgender young individuals who have been benefiting significantly from their established treatment regimen.

• Mandate Disclosure of Confidential Student Discussions by Educators to Parents, Potentially Endangering Students at Home: This legislative proposal will impede the ability of LGBTQ+ students to request support from reliable mentors within schools, and possesses the capacity to place youngsters in genuine peril should they not be secure in their domestic environment if openly LGBTQ+. Furthermore, the measure mandates that teachers and students be permitted to use incorrect pronouns/gendered language for their own students and peers, and specifically forbids educational institutions from suggesting or enforcing any guidelines regarding pronoun usage.

• Prohibit Transgender Students from Utilizing School Restrooms and Changing Facilities Aligned with Their Gender Identity.

During the chamber discussion concerning Senate Bill 150, Kentucky Senator Karen Berg, a Democrat from Louisville, expressed that the proposed legislation represented utter deliberate, purposeful animosity directed at a minority cohort of individuals who were the most defenseless and susceptible within society. She further stated that lawmakers needed to revisit their constituents and inquire of them the rationale behind their seeking public office, their current endeavors, and their motivation for civic duty, asserting that if their objective was to assist the most disadvantaged among the populace, then they were utterly falling short.

Senator Berg is the mother of the deceased Henry Berg-Brousseau, who was a transgender employee of the Human Rights Campaign and died by suicide in late 2022. Referring to her son, who dedicated years championing the equitable handling of transgender individuals in Kentucky, she remarked, 'The escalating animosity witnessed nationwide burdened him deeply.'

In heartfelt testimony, former state representative Jerry Miller, a Republican, shared insights on how his minor grandchild might suffer harm from a legislative proposal aiming to prohibit obtaining gender-affirming healthcare services for individuals under the age of eighteen. Addressing a Senate committee, Miller stated that the bill doomed at-risk youngsters to an even harder existence than they had already inherited. He implored them not to permit a guardian's prerogative to safeguard their children to become unintended consequence amidst the societal ideological conflicts.

The proposed legislation encompasses a drastic prohibition on gender-affirming treatment, an action that will directly jeopardize the health, safety, and overall well-being of transgender young individuals throughout Kentucky. Gender-affirming care, as it stands, constitutes developmentally suitable treatment deemed clinically essential for the overall health of numerous transgender and non-binary individuals who manifest indicators of gender dysphoria, or discomfort arising from their gender identity differing from their birth-assigned sex. Essentially, gender-affirming care represents an amalgamation of healthcare, psychological support, and communal assistance. In the context of transgender children, transition primarily involves a wholly social adaptation, which could entail adopting an updated appellation or preferred pronouns, utilizing alternative attire, or modifying one's hairstyle. Upon reaching adolescence, medical professionals may - following deliberation and with the educated approval from the transgender young person and their guardians - administer temporary pharmaceutical agents known as puberty-blockers, which enable a young individual to securely attain an age at which they are genuinely capable of providing assent for subsequent interventions. It is noteworthy that all reputable medical bodies - encompassing more than one point three million physicians across the United States - advocate for developmentally suitable gender-affirming care for both transgender and non-binary individuals.

As of now, throughout the year two thousand twenty-three, the Human Rights Campaign is actively monitoring exceeding four hundred fifty pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that have been brought before state legislatures nationwide. Roughly one hundred ninety of these proposed measures would expressly curtail the entitlements of transgender individuals, marking the unprecedented volume of legislative proposals aimed at transgender people within a single year to date.

For the current year, the HRC is observing the following:

• Over one hundred ten legislative proposals designed to hinder transgender young individuals from being able to obtain developmentally suitable, clinically essential, standard-of-care medical services; of these, seven have already been enacted into law across Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Dakota, Utah, Iowa, and Georgia.

• A greater number of measures proposing restrictions on restroom access introduced than in any preceding year.

• Exceeding eighty-five bills seeking to censor educational content and thirty-five bills opposing drag performances.

Through a concerted effort spearheaded by national anti-LGBTQ+ organizations, which utilized outdated prejudicial stereotypes, lawmakers in state legislatures across the nation presented three hundred fifteen prejudicial anti-LGBTQ+ legislative proposals in the year two thousand twenty-two, with twenty-nine of them subsequently being enacted. Nonetheless, less than one-tenth of these initiatives ultimately came to fruition. The preponderance of the prejudicial legislative measures - specifically one hundred forty-nine measures - were aimed at the transgender and non-binary community, with a significant portion specifically targeting children who bore the brunt of this discriminatory legislation. Upon the conclusion of the two thousand twenty-two parliamentary sitting, an unprecedented seventeen legislative proposals seeking to harm transgender and non-binary children were signed into legislation.

In the year two thousand twenty-two, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation manifested in various ways, such as:

• Eighty bills sought to hinder transgender young people from participating in scholastic athletics aligned with their gender identity. Currently, nineteen states prohibit the involvement of transgender athletes in school sports.

• Forty-two legislative measures aimed to bar transgender and non-binary young individuals from obtaining vital, clinically essential gender-affirming medical services. As of now, five states limit availability to gender-affirming care.

• Seventy bills to censor educational content endeavored to reverse progress and limit educators from addressing LGBTQ+ issues and other underrepresented groups within their classrooms. Seven of these were ultimately enacted.
  

The Human Rights Campaign stands as America's foremost civil liberties advocacy group, striving to attain equity for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals. The HRC imagines a global setting in which LGBTQ+ people are accepted as integral constituents of society within domestic spheres, professional environments, and all communal settings.