In limbo, to be honest.
A controversial bill that would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender children missed a key deadline Thursday for consideration in the Texas House.
But a similar Senate bill still has time to be approved by both chambers before the legislative session ends May 31. Senate Bill 1311 also bans gender-affirming treatment and mandates the revocation of a physician’s medical license if someone performs or prescribes such treatment. That bill passed out of committee nearly a month ago. Hours before the House’s deadline to pass many of its own bills, the Senate legislation appeared on a list of bills that could let the upper chamber take up the measure as soon as Friday.
House Bill 1399 targeted gender-confirmation surgery, hormone therapy and puberty suppression treatments. Bill supporters say children could later regret such medical care, which is considered best practice by several major medical associations. Under the bill, physicians who performed or prescribed those treatments could face disciplinary action or be denied a medical license.
“It’s harmful to debate anybody’s basic human and civil rights and to bring humanity into question as something that is not valid,” said Adri Perez, policy and advocacy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “That has a lasting impact on people and whether or not they can conceptualize a future for themselves in the state of Texas.”
Shelly Skeen, senior attorney for Lambda Legal, called the bill “one of the most extreme anti-transgender bills in the country” in a statement. Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Texas had decried the bill as unconstitutional and vowed to challenge it in court if it had become law.
There has been a slate of anti-transgender bills in the Texas Legislature this session, many of them still active. Senate Bill 1646, which would label the treatments as child abuse, passed the Senate and is waiting to be heard by the House Public Health Committee that approved HB 1399.
This story is a bit confusing, and I haven’t found anything relevant on Twitter to clarify matters. As I understand it, the Friday deadline was for House bills that have passed out of committee to be brought to the floor. Any House-originated bills that hadn’t been approved by the House by Friday night at midnight were no longer eligible to be voted on by the Senate. That appears to be the fate of HB1399, the bill to deny medical treatment to trans kids. That’s good news, but SB1311 does more or less the same thing, but has not yet been voted on by the Senate. It would need Senate approval and to go through the full House process, which means it is short on time. There’s also SB1646, the bill that defines giving medical treatment to trans kids as child abuse, which has passed the Senate and is awaiting a House hearing. The goal here is for it to never make it out of committee, and I expect that’s where advocates will spend much of their energy. Finally, there’s SB29, the anti-trans sports bill that Harold Dutton resuscitated in a fit of pique, and which is farthest along. All it needs is approval from the House, and then possibly a conference committee if the House amends it in some way.
That, as far as I can tell, is where we stand with the headline bills. There are other bills out there that didn’t get as much attention, and if they originated in the House and didn’t get passed on Friday, they’re mostly off the table. There’s always the possibility of an otherwise dead bill getting attached to some other piece of legislation, which can work but can also subject the bill to death by point of order. These last two weeks are where most of the shenanigans occur, so stay awake and be ready to respond to a sudden call to action. The Chron has more.
Pingback: Senate is right back on the anti-trans agenda – Off the Kuff