A bill to outlaw gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth earned approval Monday from the Louisiana Senate, solidifying the Legislature’s rightward shift on issues of gender and sexual identity amid a national conservative movement targeting LGBTQ+ people.
The Senate approved the measure, House Bill 648, on a 29-10 vote – a veto-proof majority that would allow the chamber to override a veto by Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards. The vote fell mostly along party lines, though several Democrats – Sens. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, Gregory Tarver, D-Shreveport and Gary Smith, D-Norco – bucked their party and voted for the ban.
The Senate’s vote followed weeks of political maneuvering that saw the bill killed by one Senate committee in an unlikely victory for LGBTQ+ advocates, revived by the full Senate and then approved by a second Senate panel last week.
The legislation is part of a wave of laws targeting LGBTQ+ people nationally, pushed by Republicans and national groups and boosted by conservative media. Louisiana has been slower than some other Republican-led state legislatures to adopt such bills – a trans health care ban was proposed last year but died without a hearing – but the proponents are finding more success this year.
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