A substitute has been posted for SB0016, which in original form was to ban surgery for transgender minors. Note, substitutes are posted and that makes the language available even before voted on. This will need to come up in committee and receive a majority vote to replace the original language, then should require a separate vote to move forward. We are told the bill will come up in committee on Wednesday at 2 PM. This should go to the Senate HHS committee, but the agenda is not yet posted.
Beyond the surgery ban, what this bill will generally do:
1. Ban new hormonal treatments for minors starting on May 3, 2023
2. Those minors already receiving treatment will continue
3. Hormonal treatments can only be performed after a diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria for a period of 6 months
4. Beginning January 1, 2024, providing a hormonal transgender treatment to a minor without a transgender treatment certification is unprofessional conduct.
5. Mandate training and licensing through DOPL for transgender healthcare
6. Health and Human Services is to conduct a study with criteria defined in the bill and return it to the Legislature
7. Allows malpractice for those times a doctor doesn’t comply with licensing and certification and for negligence (isn’t that the definition of malpractice already) and extends the statute of limitations to age 25 of the treated individual.
If you take this to a high level to weed out specifics, the bill allows continuing of existing, ongoing treatment programs for minors but will block new treatment programs. A study will be conducted by Health and Human Services and that will be used for future decisions by the legislature.
Note, we have seen this malpractice verbiage before and is concerning that it ultimately may make doctors back away from providing healthcare either to remove risk or due to increased insurance. That thought can be coupled with having additional educational requirement. This is a very concerning insertion as it could amount to a de facto ban.