Efforts to restrict transgender health care endure in 2024, with more adults targeted

Republican-led state legislatures are considering a new round of bills restricting medical care for transgender youths — and in some cases, adults — returning to the issue the year after a wave of high-profile bills became law and sparked lawsuits.

As legislatures begin their work for the year, lawmakers in several states have proposed enacting or strengthening restrictions on puberty-blocking drugs and hormone treatments for minors. Bills to govern which pronouns kids can use at school, which sports teams students can play on, and which bathroom they can use are back, as well, along with efforts to restrict drag performances and some books and school curriculums.

LGBTQ+ advocates say that most of the states inclined to pass bans on gender-affirming care have done so, and that they now expect them to build on those restrictions and expand them to include adults. With legislatures in most states up for election this year, transgender youths and their families worry about again being targeted by conservatives using them as a wedge issue.

They include Mandy Wong, a mother in Santa Barbara, California, who said she’s tired of conservative politicians using transgender children as “campaign fuel.” While she doesn’t expect such a policy to pass in her Democrat-led state, Wong said, her child and his friends feel emotionally drained.

“It was just heartbreaking to tell him … I don’t think this is going away anytime soon,” she said. “All the negative attention trans kids, even us as parents, have gotten because of these proposals doesn’t seem to be dying down.”

In Ohio, House Republicans voted Wednesday to override Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of legislation banning all forms of gender-affirming care for minors. The Senate is expected to follow suit this month. Despite his veto, DeWine signed an order banning the rare occurrence of gender-transition surgeries before adulthood. He also proposed rules mandating a care team for children and adults that critics say could severely restrict access for all patients.

In South Carolina, one of the few Southern states without a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, a House committee voted Wednesday to send a ban to the House floor. The bill, sponsored by the state’s Republican House speaker, would also prevent Medicaid from covering such treatments for anyone under age 26. And last week in New Hampshire, the House voted to ban gender-transition surgeries for minors.

At least 22 states have…