Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, right, derided the bill as “fearmongering” while evoking the Salem witch trials. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)
This article mentions suicide. The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 988.
A bill that would end hormone treatments for 67 Kentucky inmates and prohibit the use of public funds for any future gender-affirming surgeries for transgender prisoners passed the Senate Tuesday along party lines 31-6.
Opponents called the bill cruel and politically-motivated when it was heard in committee.
The sponsor, Senate Majority Whip Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green, pushed back on that accusation when introducing the measure on the Senate floor. Wilson also pointed out that Kentucky excludes transgender treatments from its Medicaid benefits and said taxpayer dollars should not be used to pay for transgender treatments for prisoners either.
“I’ve been criticized that we are somehow being inhumane by taking these folks off of these cross-sex hormones. But I will tell you that in the bill we provide for that, that a physician says that if it is something that would harm them, by taking them off cold turkey, they can cycle them off of these hormones,” he said. “These are the only medical services that we’re prohibiting. They can still get all the other medical services that a normal person would get. So, we’re not being inhumane.”
Bill barring use of public funds on transgender treatments for Kentucky inmates advances
Senate Bill 2 says public dollars cannot be used to fund a “cosmetic service or elective procedure” for Kentucky inmates including for “cross sex hormones” and “any gender reassignment surgery.” It also says if a health care provider documents that ending a treatment would harm an inmate, use of the drug or hormone may be “systematically reduced and eliminated.”
Wilson pointed to the controversy late last year over a Kentucky Department of Corrections policy allowing transgender inmates to apply for gender-affirming treatments, saying the department went about that “under the cover of darkness, out from the public view.”
Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, whose transgender son died by suicide in 2022, called the bill a “fearmongering” effort while evoking the Salem witch trials.
“This is nothing but … a continued witch hunt to make sure that the most vulnerable people in this state are outed and abused and tortured for no reason other than you’re not comfortable with it,” she said. “They did not burn witches. They didn’t hang witches. Not one person that was hung at the Salem witch trials was a witch. They hung women — real, live people with real lives, over mass hysteria, over fear that is being propagated by lies coming from leadership of the Republican party to your door, and I don’t know why we put up with it.”
Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, asked if biologically female inmates have access to breast reduction for health reasons, if they receive hormone replacement therapy for hot flashes and if they’re given feminine care products at taxpayer expense. Wilson said he did not believe they got the period products or breast reductions, but did not know about the hormone treatments.
“Female inmates are not even treated with the dignity to have medical treatment covered by taxpayers for necessary, basic, common necessities and cosmetic surgeries that have health implications,” Tichenor said. “This bill is a priority, in my opinion, because we’re dealing with the issue of spending taxpayer dollars on issues that are exacerbating a false reality for inmates. It doesn’t matter how many hormones you put them on, which lead them eventually towards surgery, and that is the goal, they cannot change who they are.”
Tichenor also said she thinks male prisoners would take hormones with the goal to “eventually be in women’s prisons.”
The opposition: The Constitution and misplaced priorities
Democrats focused their arguments against the bill on the protections against cruel and unusual punishments guaranteed by the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the potential cost of lawsuits based on constitutional claims. They also slammed the high priority of SB 2, saying they believed other issues deserved that attention.
“We have a long line of cases that say that when a physician deems something to be medically necessary for someone, it is, in many cases, unconstitutional for the government to enact a blanket ban to deny it,” said Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, D-Louisville.
“Of course, when we take folks into custody and they are unable to access health care in any way except through us, and a licensed physician has determined that something is medically necessary, for the government to step in and say ‘we know better,’ is unconstitutional,” said Chambers Armstrong.
Minority Caucus Chair Sen. Reggie Thomas, D-Lexington, said the high priority of the bill is a way to “vilify the LGBTQ community.”
“We’ve got schools that are underfunded. We’ve got rural hospitals going out of business. We’ve got a serious problem with over 600,000 children on Medicaid. And this is our No. 2 priority,” Thomas said. “I would submit to the public today and to this body that our priorities are really out of whack.”
Senate Bill 1, the chamber’s top priority, reduced the state income tax. It already has been signed into law by the governor.