Tennessee legislature passes bill criminalizing adults aiding minors in receiving gender-affirming care News
Luiz1940, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Tennessee legislature passes bill criminalizing adults aiding minors in receiving gender-affirming care

The Tennessee House of Representatives approved a bill on Thursday that criminalizes adults who knowingly take minors away from Tennessee to help them receive gender-affirming medical procedures without the consent of their parents.

The companion bill was introduced to the Tennessee House of Representatives on January 29, 2024 as HB 2310 by Representative Bryan Richey and to the Tennessee Senate on January 31. Senator Janice Bowling introduced SB 2782 in the Senate. The bill originally allowed parents to sue any adult who “knowingly remove[s] a minor from [Tennessee] without the consent of a parent of the minor” for the purpose of aiding the minor to receive medical procedures for making the minor better able to identify with a sex they are not.

Since then, however, the Senate and House have both added their own amendments to the bill. The Senate’s amendment added that in a civil action based on violating the bill, “[The] plaintiff may recover from the person: (A) Compensatory damages; (B) Punitive damages; and (C) Reasonable attorney’s fees, court costs, and expenses.” It also made violating the bill a Class C felony, which has the sentencing range for a first-time offender as three to six years imprisonment and, for a repeat offender, can be as high as 10 to 15 years imprisonment. The House’s amendment most notably added that the “common carrier transporting passengers for hire” as part of their business activities are exempt from the bill.

The Senate initially rejected the House’s amendment. In order to resolve their dispute, both the Senate and House appointed their own Conference Committees. Both committees ended up approving the bill and its amendments, with the Senate having a 2-1 vote and the House having a 3-1 vote.

According to The Tennessee Conservative, Richey stated that the bill is simply a “parents’ rights bill.” Tennessee advocates for Planned Parenthood see the bill as an unconstitutional attack on personal autonomy. Planned Parenthood went on to say:

[T]he exclusion of the term ‘legal guardian’ and inclusion of only the consent of ‘a parent’ poses the likely possibility that this bill would disproportionately impact youth who do not have parents or accessible parents, youth who likely are members of multiple marginalized identities and facing heightened social and health inequities.

The bill now awaits approval from the Tennessee Governor Bill Lee for the bill to become law in the state.

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