The Tennessee Equality Project (TEP) expects ongoing attacks on adult gender-affirming care in the next legislative session.
This prediction comes days after the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Tennessee’s law that bans doctors from administering gender-affirming care to minors. A preliminary injunction was issued prior to this ruling in late June.
Senate Bill 1 was signed into law by Governor Bill Lee on March 2nd and prohibits healthcare professionals from administering gender-affirming care to minors. The law was set to take effect on July 1st.
This legislation will make gender-affirming hormone therapy and puberty blockers inaccessible, and trans people in Tennessee will not have access to this care until they reach the age of 18. Similar restrictions have been made in states like Arkansas and Alabama.
“Not content to ban it for youth, I think the legislature will probably explore ways to make it [gender-affirming care] more difficult for adults,” said Chris Sanders, executive director of TEP and the Tennessee Equality Project Foundation.
The Campaign for Southern Equality released a report entitled “LGBTQ Tennesseans: A Report of the 2021 Southern LGBTQ Experiences Survey,” in which they highlighted the experiences of more than 4,000 LGBTQ people in the South. The report said that Tennessee does not “have laws guaranteeing LGBTQ access to healthcare or protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination in healthcare.”
The report also stated that state Medicaid policy and state employee health insurance policy “explicitly exclude coverage for gender affirming care.”
While the state does allow for adults to access gender-affirming care, there have been other issues that have stalled progress for transgender people in Tennessee. The Flyer recently reported that a federal lawsuit regarding changes to gender markers on Tennessee birth certificates was dismissed.
Sanders explained that he believed that progress has not been linear in the state, and that it actually takes a “zig-zagging” path. He also explained that there aren’t many legal protections in the state aside from what the federal government provides.
There is also the possibility of “more attacks” on school curriculum on the elementary and secondary level, as well as in higher education, Sanders said.
Governor Bill Lee signed Senate Bill 102 into law in May of 2023, which allows Tennessee school and university employees to skip implicit bias training. In 2021, the legislature passed a bill that “requires an LEA or public charter school to notify a student’s parent or guardian prior to commencing instruction of a sexual orientation or gender identity curriculum.”
“You see those kinds of fights play out in local school boards around the state as well,” Sanders said.
Sanders cited that a school board member in Wilson County, Tennessee, proposed a policy that would out transgender youth in schools. He explained that the policy has yet to advance, but he said it is typical of the types of things that are playing out around the state.
“I can’t imagine there would be a serious proposal that would advance like that [in Shelby County], but some of your West Tennessee school boards I’m sure, given time, will pick up those things,” Sanders said.