North Carolina Republicans introduced an extreme bill targeting the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ youth on Monday, on the heels of a package of recent Democratic bills proposing broad protections for LGBTQ+ North Carolinians.
The proposed legislation, Senate Bill 514, would prohibit doctors from providing gender affirming care to anyone under the age of 21, including surgeries, hormone treatment, or puberty blockers. The bill further offers protections for providers practicing conversion therapy, while subjecting doctors who provide gender affirming medical care to trans youth to fines and the potential revocation of their license.
Not only that, it would compel state employees, including teachers, to notify a child’s parents if they exhibit signs of “gender nonconformity.”
SB 514 is similar to the widely condemned bill introduced in Mississippi that targeted trans people under 21 and also bears similarities to legislation in Alabama that seeks to punish doctors for providing gender affirming care. But unlike the Alabama bill, North Carolina’s legislation does not threaten doctors with jail time.
LGBTQ+ advocates are sounding the alarm on SB 514, warning that the proposed bill is especially concerning given its wide-ranging potential impact. Requiring teachers and other state employees to report “gender nonconformity” in children doesn’t just run the risk of outing trans or non-binary youth to their parents, it also stands to impact queer children and even cis kids who don’t perform their gender assigned at birth to societal expectations.
“These attempts to control the bodies and medical decisions of parents and their transgender children are invasive, inappropriate, and outright dangerous,” Kendra R. Johnson, the executive director of Equality North Carolina, said in a statement to them. “Decisions about a child’s medical welfare should be made between that child, their doctor, and their parents or guardians — not lawmakers.”
In 2016, North Carolina became the first state to pass legislation banning trans people from using the bathroom that correlated with their lived gender. As a result of that legislation, known as House Bill 2, the NCAA said it would not hold tournament events in the state. Legislators in North Carolina modified the bill to avoid the boycott, but the “compromise” effort still prevented anti-discrimination policies from being implemented until December 2020.
On the five year anniversary of HB 2, a group of Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation that would offer sweeping protections for LGBTQ+ people in North Carolina. One of the proposed bills would broadly prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ+ North Carolinans. Another would fully repeal HB 2, while the third would ban conversion therapy for minors.
Less than a week later, three Republican lawmakers — Senators Ralph Hise (R-47th District), Warren Daniel (R-46th District), and Norman Sanderson (R-2nd District) — responded with the introduction of SB 514.
Reverend Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, said that it’s clear that these lawmakers haven’t internalized the lesson that North Carolina learned “all too painfully with HB2: Extreme bills that target LGBTQ people harm individuals, communities, and the fabric of our state itself.”
“We’re working toward building communities across North Carolina where every LGBTQ person can thrive: that means being treated with dignity and respect, it means living free from discrimination, and it means being able to access the health care you need and deserve in your hometown,” she said in a statement, referring to the passage of several local LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination ordinances following HB 2’s sunset.
Advocates have warned that bills targeting trans youth can have a deadly impact. After HB1570 passed in Arkansas and its veto by governor Asa Hutchinson was overridden by the state legislature, local doctors reported an immediate uptick in suicidality of trans teens in the state. Michele Hutchison, a pediatric doctor in Arkansas, told The Cut that after the bill passed the House, there were “multiple kids in our emergency room because of an attempted suicide.”
Advocates are fighting two other anti-LGBTQ+ bills also currently under consideration in North Carolina. SB 515 would allow any medical provider — a term the bill defines very broadly — to deny care or refuse to perform any service on the basis of conscience. Local civil rights organizations have called the proposal, which is similar to a bill signed by Hutchinson last month, a “license to discriminate.”
Meanwhile, HB 358 would prohibit trans youth from competing on sports teams that align with their lived gender, an issue that’s become a flashpoint for trans-exclusionary legislation across the country.
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for them.’s weekly newsletter here.
