Tennessee Becomes Second State To Ban Trans Hormone Treatments Before Puberty

Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed legislation Tuesday that bans hormone treatment for prepubescent minors.

SB0126 goes into effect immediately, making Tennessee the second state to ban trans procedures for minors, NBC reported. The Arkansas state legislature overrode Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s veto of a bill banning transgender surgeries and procedures for minors in April.

Arkansas’ “Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act,” otherwise known as the SAFE Act, prohibits physicians from performing gender transition procedures, such as puberty blockers or “top” and “bottom” surgeries, on minors before puberty. Transgender surgeries include vaginoplasty, phalloplasty, breast implants, and facial surgeries.

Tennessee’s bill does not go so far as Arkansas’s bill does: SB0126 increases training requirements for “those unlicensed persons employed by licensed agencies to assist children and youth with the self-administration of medication in a group home setting without being subject to nursing licensure and other nursing requirements.”

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The bill includes an amendment prohibiting a “healthcare prescriber from prescribing a course of treatment that involves hormone treatment for gender dysphoric or gender incongruent prepubertal minors,” but notes that “a healthcare prescriber may prescribe a course of treatment that involves hormone treatments for prepubertal minors for diagnoses of growth deficiencies or other diagnoses unrelated to gender dysphoria or gender incongruency.”

Lee, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation, signed two other trans bills this week as well.

HB 1182 requires businesses to post notices at the entrance of each public restroom explaining if a business allows “a member of either biological sex to use any public restroom within the building or facility, if the entity or business maintains such a policy.”

HB1233 bars transgender persons from using multi-person bathrooms that don’t align with their biological sex, and opens the door to lawsuits against public schools and districts if they let trans students or employees use multi-person bathrooms not aligning with their biological sex.

“Gov. Lee’s decision to sign HB 1182 will cause real harm to transgender Tennesseans,” Human Rights Campaign president Alphonso David said in a statement. “Denying transgender people the ability to access a bathroom consistent with their gender identity is degrading and dehumanizing — and can have real health and safety consequences.”

“Gov. Lee and Tennessee lawmakers are determined to discriminate against the transgender community and roll back the clock on equality instead of focusing on real problems facing Tennesseans,” he added. “To be clear — Tennessee residents will suffer economic, legal, and reputational consequences of these bills and we will hold those who are indoctrinating hate into our laws accountable.”