Sponsors (3)
The bill strengthens civil remedies for alleged harms from minors' gender‑transition procedures and protects providers' conscience rights, but it does so by restricting access to gender‑affirming care, expanding liability and jurisdictional hooks, risking loss of federal HHS funding for some states, and creating legal uncertainty that could harm patients and providers.
Minors who received gender‑transition procedures (and their guardians) can pursue long‑running civil remedies: plaintiffs may sue up to 30 years after turning 18 and recover compensatory/punitive damages and attorney’s fees.
Healthcare practitioners are protected from being compelled to perform gender‑transition procedures by federal law and (separately) from state laws that would force them to act against conscience, and the bill clarifies that the prohibition overrides conflicting federal requirements, reducing some legal uncertainty for refusing providers.
Patients with certain intersex diagnoses and those needing emergency life‑saving or limb‑saving procedures remain eligible for medically indicated interventions without those procedures being treated as banned 'gender‑transition' treatments when properly certified.
Transgender minors and adults are likely to face reduced access to gender‑affirming care because clinicians may decline to provide services, telemedicine across state lines may be curtailed, insurers and federal programs may avoid coverage, and some states’ policies could further restrict care.
Medical practitioners, hospitals, telehealth platforms, insurers, and other intermediaries face expanded federal liability whenever an interstate commerce link exists, increasing malpractice risk, defensive medicine, administrative burden, and likelihood of out‑of‑state litigation.
States that enact or maintain laws requiring gender‑transition procedures risk losing HHS funding, which could cut Medicaid, public‑health, and research programs and create fiscal pressure on states and taxpayers to replace lost federal support.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Introduced January 23, 2025 by Brian Babin · Last progress January 23, 2025
Creates a new federal civil cause of action allowing a minor (or their representative) to sue a medical practitioner for performing certain gender‑transition procedures on anyone under 18 when an interstate-or-foreign-commerce connection exists; allows declaratory/injunctive relief, compensatory and punitive damages, and attorneys’ fees, with a 30‑year limitations period measured from the plaintiff’s 18th birthday. The law also bars any federal requirement that a practitioner perform such procedures and directs HHS to deny federal funding to any state that requires practitioners to perform them. It defines “gender‑transition procedure,” “biological sex,” and “medical practitioner,” and lists narrow medical exceptions; it takes effect on enactment.