Sponsors (12)
The bill prioritizes preventing and enabling compensation for childhood medical transition by banning gender‑affirming medical procedures for minors and strengthening plaintiffs' recovery options, at the cost of increased legal, administrative, and liability risks that are likely to reduce access to contested pediatric care, strain clinicians and health systems, and raise privacy and cost concerns.
Children and families: the bill prohibits medical providers from giving puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or sex‑affirming surgeries to minors, reducing the risk that minors receive those irreversible interventions.
People who underwent childhood medical transition: the bill creates a federal civil pathway to recover compensatory, non-economic, and punitive damages for harms from childhood chemical or surgical interventions.
Young adults who later incur detransition costs: the bill preserves extended time windows to sue (including up to 25 years after turning 18 and an additional 4-year period tied to when detransition costs arise), helping preserve access to compensation for later-discovered harms.
Minors and families: the bill will reduce access to gender‑related and other contested pediatric treatments (including by blocking cross‑state care, telehealth referrals, and mailed/shipped medical supplies), increasing unmet medical and mental‑health needs for some young people.
Healthcare providers, hospitals, and clinics: the bill creates significant new legal and financial exposure (strict liability, retroactive claims, and long-tail liability windows), raising malpractice risk and the chance providers will stop offering services or raise prices.
Healthcare providers and institutions: the bill broadens criminalization and civil exposure by linking prohibited participation to interstate commerce and by imposing clear-and-convincing evidentiary standards, increasing litigation risk, administrative burdens, and incentives to deny contested care.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Prohibits puberty blockers, cross‑sex hormones, and certain surgeries for minors under federal/interstate triggers and creates a federal civil right to sue providers with retroactive damages.
Introduced September 18, 2025 by Marsha Blackburn · Last progress September 18, 2025
Prohibits health care professionals, hospitals, and clinics from providing or participating in puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgeries intended to alter sexual characteristics for anyone under 18 when federal jurisdiction or interstate commerce is implicated. It defines the covered treatments and "participation" broadly, sets narrow statutory exceptions, and requires providers to prove any exception by clear and convincing evidence. Creates a federal private right for children subjected to these treatments (or their parents/guardians) to sue providers in federal court for compensatory, non‑economic, and punitive damages; the cause of action applies retroactively and allows lawsuits for many years after adulthood or after costs of detransition care are incurred.