Rep. Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby) doesn’t think gender-affirming care for transgender people will age well — he wants health care providers and insurance companies to keep records on transgender patients and their treatments.
House Bill 754/Senate Bill 676 is now on its way to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk to be signed into law, having passed the Senate Monday afternoon. Under the legislation, the Tennessee Department of Health would produce an aggregate report on a public website listing the number and nature of gender-affirming treatments across the state. Bill sponsors promise that patients’ identifying information will not be shared. The bill also requires insurance companies that cover gender-affirming care for trans people to also cover detransition treatment. It prohibits local governments from enacting policies banning talk therapy as a treatment for gender dysphoria, with bill co-sponsor Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) expressing concern on the Senate floor Monday that this form of therapy would get tied up in the state’s ban on conversion therapy.
Sponsor Faison calls gender-affirming care ‘as dumb as frontal lobotomies’
Under its latest amendment, the legislation will no longer include a patient’s county in public-facing data. Taylor told his fellow lawmakers Monday that this amendment comes at the request of protesters he recently spoke with outside the Capitol who were concerned that trans people in small towns could be outed. Taylor also said he views gender-affirming care as a “fad” and compared the data collection to reporting cases of botulism, smallpox, ebola, measles, rabies and sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and AIDS. Co-sponsor Faison compared gender-affirming care to “frontal lobotomies” last week.
Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) called the bill a “remarkably invasive surveillance protocol.”
“We are singling out one group for one of the most unusual and most invasive surveillance regimes imaginable,” Yarbro said on the Senate floor Monday. “There are other reporting requirements, but they do not require reporting someone's physician, their drugs, the dosages — they certainly don't require reporting mental health diagnoses.”
HB 754 raises alarm for the transgender community, especially as it follows a recent slate of anti-trans legislation — including a ban on gender-affirming care for minors in 2023. That ban was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States following a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union and some Tennessee families. State Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti also launched a probe in 2023 during which Vanderbilt University Medical Center produced patient records for 106 transgender individuals. Two of those patients filed a lawsuit at the time, citing concerns for their safety. VUMC also recently halted gender-affirming surgeries, though such procedures are still legal in the state.
Patients received surprise messages Friday saying health care system will no longer offer gender-affirming surgeries
“The construction of this bill is meant to make essential what they refer to as detransition care, and to do that, they say they need all of this other data in case somebody wants to ‘take back’ one of those decisions later on,” said Dahron Johnson, co-chair of the Nashville committee of the Tennessee Equality Project, prior to the vote.
As the bill was heard, roughly 20 protesters gathered in the state Capitol chanted: “When trans rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back.”
“It creates a great concern that this doesn't only affect trans and gender-diverse folks, but any variety of patients who get care that helps them feel at home in their own bodies,” Johnson said. “And if we're going to have that discussion, then we should be having a discussion about how it helps you, how it helps me, how it helps all these folks behind me, and how it helps any of the folks at home — how this state can support any of us feeling healthy and whole.
Hamilton Matthew Masters contributed to reporting.
