The Ohio Senate voted on Wednesday to override Governor Mike DeWine’s veto of HB 68, which bans gender-affirming care for transgender youth and restricts transgender participation in sports. The Ohio House previously voted to override the governor’s veto on January 10. The two votes to override means the governor’s veto is void and the law will go into effect.
HB 68 says that physicians may not “prescribe a cross-sex hormone or puberty-blocking drug for a minor individual for the purpose of assisting the minor individual with gender transition” or “engage in conduct that aids or abets” such care, with an exception for constitutionally protected speech. This effectively outlaws physicians from providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth. The law includes restrictions on medical professional’s ability to diagnose gender dysphoria, saying they can only do so with the consent of a parent. It also prohibits physicians from performing gender-reassignment surgeries on minors.
There are some exceptions to the ban on gender-related surgeries and hormonal care, including youth that are already receiving gender-affirming care. One of the main exceptions is people who were born with “a medically verifiable disorder of sex development,” including people “with external biological sex characteristics that are irresolvably ambiguous.” This is likely a reference to Intersex people, who do not fit typical definitions of male and female. Doctors will often perform surgeries on Intersex people when they are born, or give them hormonal care to more closely align an Intersex person with male or female characteristics.
Many Intersex people and their parents say these surgeries can be non-consensual or coerced, violating bodily autonomy. They have criticized gender-affirming care bans and their exceptions for Intersex people, with one parent telling ABC News:
Trans people are being told, ‘You can’t possibly know anything about your body because you’re way too young’…And then for intersex people, it’s the opposite. The choice of your gender is so important that you can’t possibly wait until you’re old enough to understand,
The American Medical Association has defended gender-affirming care, and strengthened its stance in 2023. The Ohio Children’s Hospital Association previously condemned HB 68 and said the law “will be devastating to kids and their families who are already at their most vulnerable and will place an insurmountable barrier between patients and their medical professionals for often lifesaving care.”
In addition to restrictions on gender-affirming care, HB 68 mandates sex-separated sports in schools and specifically says that transgender girls cannot participate in girl’s sports. The law prohibits organizations or local governments from processing complaints, starting investigations, or taking any other action against schools that enforce this policy.
The vote comes amid a torrent of anti-transgender and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in conservative states. Last year, a prominent LGBTQ+ rights group declared a state of emergency in the US, echoing concerns from a UN expert that LGBTQ+ rights in the US were being “deliberately undermined” by state governments. LGBTQ+ rights in the US are falling more and more along state and partisan lines, with Human Rights Campaign calling Republican-controlled states “increasingly hostile to LGBTQ+ people.”
State legislators introduced more than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in 2023, a historic high. Tennessee and Florida attracted particular attention for strict laws targeting drag performances and school discussions. Laws are not limited to those states, however, with Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and others passing bills banning gender-affirming care. More recently, a West Virginia’s legislator introduced a bill to criminalize transgender people as “obscene matter.”
Activists and families have challenged many of these laws, to varying success. A federal court struck down Arkansas’s gender-affirming care ban, but a different court upheld similar bans in Tennessee and Kentucky.
