Bills affecting transgender kids still in play in Legislature

Thirteen bills before the Texas Legislature this session address the treatment of transgender children in the public and private sphere. As the session winds down, three are still in play.

The Texas bills restricting athletic participation, medical care, gender changes on official documents and parental rights for trans kids came amid a flood of more than 100 similar bills around the country. These measures were the brainchild of the conservative group Promise to America’s Children, a coalition of ultra-conservative and evangelical groups that offers to provide model bills to lawmakers on its website.

Authors of the Texas bills say they want to protect children with gender dysphoria from the “dangerous” imposition of interventions and prevent transgender kids from playing on scholastic sports teams that align with their gender identity.

Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, who proposed a law that would penalize doctors for providing medications and therapies to help children transition, as well as gender-affirming surgery, spoke on the floor of the Senate in April about why he thinks intervention was needed. It is extremely rare for children under 18 to get such surgery.

“We don’t let children get tattoos, smoke tobacco, drink alcohol, use a tanning bed, get a concealed handgun license, buy spray paint or vote; why then would we continue to allow children to be prematurely mutilated by chemicals or surgery?” Hall said.

House Bill 1399, another iteration of the law authored by Rep. Matt Krause, R-Forth Worth, was calendared for a vote but expired Thursday before lawmakers could vote on it. Hall’s bill, SB 1311, is likely to pass in the more socially conservative Senate under the leadership of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who championed the bathroom bill in 2017.

Also before that body in the coming days is SB 1646, which designates adults who allow children to access gender-affirming care and any person who supplies the drugs as child abusers. Teachers, nurses and other professionals would be mandated to notify the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services if they learn a child is receiving this care and parents could lose custody, under the law proposed by Sen. Charles Perry. The bill cleared the Texas Senate in late April, less than 48 hours after the American Medical Association came out firmly in opposition to such bills, warning that “forgoing gender-affirming care can have tragic health consequences, both mental and physical.”

Senate Bill 29 would ban transgender children from playing on a middle or high school team that aligns with their gender identity. Schools would have to rely on their original birth certificate.

Parents, children, physicians and educators testified about the harmful stigma the bills could impose on adolescents who are statistically likelier to experience suicidal thoughts, according to a study in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The proposed sports bill was revived single-handedly in the House in early May by Houston Democrat Harold Dutton, who backed a less-stringent amended version of the measure that didn’t require the birth certificate to be the one issued at birth. It is in Dutton’s hands whether to push this bill along in the next couple of weeks.