Background
With Governor Mark Gordon’s signature, Wyoming joins 23 other states that have implemented partial or total bans on gender-affirming care in recent years.
The Wyoming bill, known as Senate File 99, was approved by lawmakers in both chambers earlier this month. Under the legislation, doctors, pharmacists and other healthcare providers who provide gender-affirming care can have their licenses suspended or revoked.
As in other states, proponents of the measure have argued that the treatments in minors are relatively new and the long-term effects have not been well studied. The bill’s sponsor, Senator Anthony Bouchard, said the law “prohibits the use of pharmaceutical agents to alter the normal development of adolescents.”
On Friday, Governor Gordon offered muted support for the measure.
“I signed SF99 because I support the protections this law provides for children,” Mr. Gordon said in a statement. “However, I believe that the government is interfering in the personal affairs of families.”
Transgender advocates in Wyoming said conservative resistance to government interference is one reason similar measures haven’t been implemented before. In earlier sessions, some Republicans were sympathetic to the argument that the restrictions violated parents’ right to make decisions for their children.
“The idea of the government coming into your living room and telling you what kind of health care your child can get — I just can’t underscore enough how backwards that would be for Wyoming,” Sara Burlingame, a former Democratic state lawmaker, said in an interview.
But with the 2024 election looming, Republican lawmakers were under pressure to pass the legislation this year, said Ms. Burlingame, who is now executive director of Wyoming Equality, an LGBTQ advocacy group.
She added that she was “dismayed” by the governor’s decision.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, which commissioned a systematic review of medical research on what is known as gender-affirming care for minors, opposed the bill. The group has taken the position that puberty blockers and hormone therapies may be essential for the mental health of transgender youth.
The landscape of transgender legislation
In wyoming, about 200 people between the ages of 13 and 17 identify as transgender, according to an estimate from the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School as of 2022. Nationwide, approximately 100,000 transgender minors live in the 24 states that have passed laws restricting gender-affirming care. As a result, many families have moved across state lines.
Since 2021, nearly every Republican-led state has imposed restrictions on transitional care for youth as part of a party-wide strategy to mobilize cultural conservatives ahead of the 2024 primaries.
In an effort to protect minors facing these restrictions, lawmakers in Maine have introduced a bill, LD 277, that would provide safeguards for patients traveling to that state to receive transition care. In an unusual move earlier this month, attorneys general from 15 other states sent a letter to Maine lawmakersincluding Governor Janet Mills, who said they would take action against the state if the law were passed.
Federal and state judges have blocked enforcement of the ban on transitional care in some states and left it in effect in others. Transgender youth, their families and the Justice Department have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case against Tennessee’s law. The court has yet to decide whether to hear the case, but a ruling would have far-reaching consequences for all state bans, legal experts said.
What’s next
Wyoming’s new law takes effect July 1. But a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit on Oklahoma’s ban on transition care could have implications for Wyoming law, since the state falls under the same jurisdiction.