Under a bill that passed the state House Thursday and is slated to head to the Senate floor, health care providers and insurance companies would be required to submit data on transgender patients and their treatments to the Tennessee Department of Health.
The bill (HB 754/SB 676) would also require insurance companies that cover gender-affirming care for trans people to cover detransition treatment. But the legislation's data-collection element is what raised concern for advocates like Dahron Johnson, co-chair of the Nashville committee of the Tennessee Equality Project. The trans community is small, she points out.
“When you create a new tool to collect data about such a specific and targeted group, you can't not call that a registry of specific people,” Johnson tells the Scene. "If a community has been this vilified, this monstrified, we've got to be concerned about whose hands that's going to fall into, what ways it's going to be used, and that's why we continue to push back against this bill and to really question the very purposes on which it's based.”
Bill sponsor Rep. Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby) said in a press conference Thursday that he has met dozens of individuals who sought to transition genders and ultimately detransitioned. In committee, an individual testified for the bill, claiming that while insurance paid for gender-affirming care, further detransition care was not covered.
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“I believe that we as a society are going to look back on this time that really burst out in 2014 and think, 'Dear God, What were we thinking? This was as dumb as frontal lobotomies,'” Faison said of gender-affirming care. “I think we're going to look back on society one day and think that.”
Faison says the data to be collected is “macro data” that would be "de-identified" in compliance with HIPAA.
“I think it's important that we have collected as much data as we can to make sure we say, 'All right, this is what led to it — this is how we got out of it. This treatment worked for this,'" Faison said.
Johnson argues that even “detransitioning” could be considered gender-affirming care.
“If someone isn't feeling at home in their own body, we should be offering care for them, regardless of who they are, how they are, where they are, when they are in the world," she says. "We should be supporting that care.
“Call it 'detransition' if you want," Johnson continues. "That continues to be gender-affirming care, actually. That this is a person who is trying to find a way to feel at home, feel whole in their own body, and I certainly wouldn't begrudge anybody that opportunity.”
Protesters gathered at the Capitol to speak out against the legislation, with one demonstrator — Nashville songwriter Heather Mae — carried out of the House gallery by state troopers.
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House Bill 754 is far from the state's first attempt at targeting transgender people. The legislation mirrors a 2023 probe from Tennessee Attorney General Anthony Skrmetti, during which Vanderbilt University Medical Center produced 106 transgender patient records. Two of those patients filed a lawsuit at the time, citing concerns for their safety.
Prompted by an anti-trans rally from conservative media outlet The Daily Wire, Tennessee banned 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 local families. In the past several years, the Tennessee General Assembly has passed legislation targeting which bathrooms transgender students are allowed to use and access to sports for transgender students.
Earlier this year, Vanderbilt University Medical Center stopped offering gender affirming surgeries for adults, despite it still being legal to perform such surgeries in the state. The move comes after the hospital system gutted its LGBTQ health initiatives.
