Kentucky Legislature overrides governor's veto of bill restricting transgender procedures for minors

By Kate Scanlon, OSV News

(OSV News) -- Republican state lawmakers in Kentucky March 29 overrode the Democratic governor’s veto of a bill impacting minors who identify as transgender. Gov. Andy Beshear had vetoed the measure, but the GOP holds supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature, allowing lawmakers to override that veto.

The Kentucky law bans gender reassignment surgery for anyone under 18, as well as the use of puberty blockers or hormones, among other interventions, for minors. It also requires students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their biological sex rather than their self-perceived gender identities.

“Denying the truth that we are either male or female causes real harm to people, especially vulnerable children," Matt Sharp, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom and director of the ADF Center for Legislative Advocacy, said in a statement.

The Kentucky Legislature, Sharp said, "enacted vital protections for young children and parents to ensure they can’t be pressured into agreeing to life-altering, so-called ‘gender transition’ procedures."

"Young people deserve to live in a society that doesn’t subject them to risky experiments to which they cannot effectively consent," Sharp said. "That’s why other countries -- like Sweden, England and Finland -- are adopting policies that better protect children from the bad science that has already devastated countless lives."

"By overriding the governor’s veto, the Legislature also ensured Kentucky parents have greater access to the curriculum, policies and information that affects their children," Sharp said.

"Public schools have no right to shut parents out of their child’s education and development," he added. "This legislation makes clear that the government cannot interfere with parents’ fundamental right to direct the education and upbringing of their children."

The Kentucky law is part of a broader effort to pass such bills across the country. Other states, including Iowa, Mississippi, Utah, South Dakota and Tennessee, also have moved to restrict surgical and hormonal interventions for minors this year. Legislators in Indiana and Nebraska recently advanced comparable efforts.

More than 400 "anti-LGBTQ bills" have been filed in state legislatures in the 2023 legislative session, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes bills restricting surgical and hormonal interventions for transgender individuals.

Amber Duke, executive director for the ACLU of Kentucky, called the Legislature's override "another shameful attack on LGBTQ youth in Kentucky."

"To all the trans youth who may be affected by this legislation: we stand by you, and we will not stop fighting. You are cherished. You are loved. You belong," Duke said. "To the commonwealth: we will see you in court."

The controversy over the transgender bill will be a factor into Beshear’s campaign as he seeks reelection to a second term later this year in what is expected to be a competitive race. Beshear defeated former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin by about 5,000 votes in 2019, a close margin for a state that former President Donald Trump carried by nearly 26 points in 2020. A Morning Consult poll from January found that about six in 10 Kentucky voters approve of Beshear’s job performance, making him the nation’s most popular Democratic governor at the time.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Administrative Committee March 15 approved release of the 14-page statement by the USCCB's Committee on Doctrine, which stated that surgical, chemical or other interventions that aim "to exchange" a person's "sex characteristics" for those of the opposite sex "are not morally justified."

The bishops urged "particular care" be taken "to protect children and adolescents, who are still maturing and who are not capable of providing informed consent" for surgical procedures or treatments such as chemical puberty blockers, "which arrest the natural course of puberty and prevent the development of some sex characteristics in the first place."