LEXINGTON, Ky. — A Republican-backed bill that would bar Kentucky’s prisons and jails from paying for and providing hormone therapy to transgender inmates won approval in a legislative committee Thursday morning.

Senate Bill 2 from Senate Majority Whip Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green, would codify into law that “if you’re incarcerated, you’re not entitled to have cross-sex hormones or sex-change operations to change your sex from one to another,” he told the Judiciary Committee.

Wilson’s bill is one of two Republicans have filed to crack down on the use of public dollars being spent on gender-affirming care for transgender people in correctional facilities, and is the first of the two to get a committee vote.

A similar bill filed Wednesday by Rep. Kim Moser, R-Taylor Mill, would block the use of public funds for “elective procedures” and “cosmetic services” for Kentucky inmates, including access to gender-affirming medication.

But unlike Wilson’s bill, Moser’s House Bill 5 only prevents jails and prisons from “initiating” a prescription to a medication that’s considered gender-affirming. Her bill would not apply to a trans inmate who “was undergoing this treatment upon admission to the correctional facility and physical harm would result from its discontinuation,” according to the bill’s language.

Wilson characterized his bill as a response to the state’s Department of Corrections “illegally” promulgating its own internal regulations for how trans inmates are treated, even though Kentucky Revised Statutes allow for individual departments to do so.

“They were doing it by memo, and it became part of their policy,” Wilson said. Then the department “decided they were going go to do this by (internal) regulation . . . provide these services to our inmates, to our prisoners, to those that are criminals in our prison system.”

He cited this as the “reason this is needed, to make sure this is in statute, so they don’t go back to doing it illegally by memo.”

Wilson’s bill, which has more than 30 Republican co-sponsors, comes after many Republicans in December learned the state Department of Corrections was providing this type of health care to trans inmates.

An attorney for the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet told a Government Contract Review Committee in January there were 67 transgender inmates receiving gender-affirming prescription hormone therapy in the state’s jails and prisons — a population that accounts for 0.5% of the total incarcerated population in Kentucky.

Chris Hartman, executive director for the Fairness Campaign, told the committee Thursday the bill was unconstitutional and a “politically motivated attack against one of our smallest and most vulnerable communities.”

“You cannot tell me this is one of the most pressing issues for the vast majority of Kentuckians,” Hartman said.

When news spread in December that trans inmates were receiving affirming medical care, several in the GOP were quick to deride the department — and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear — that it was even being provided it all, no matter if it was doctor-recommended.

Wilson implied as much during the Judiciary Committee meeting, too, saying he would only support continued prescribing of this medication if the dosage was actively tapered with the goal of being “systematically reduced and eliminated,” as the bill states.

“If it was deemed medically necessary, would you support the fact that it should be prescribed?” Senate Minority Floor Leader Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, asked Wilson.

Wilson said because gender-affirming care is a “cosmetic service” and an “elective procedure,” he only supports prescribing hormone therapy, for instance if a “a health care provider determines in documents that immediately terminating the use of the drug or medication would cause physical harm.”

Even then, Wilson said, he only supports the continued care as long as it’s being “systematically reduced” to the point of eventually being “eliminated.”

“Do you have any medical training with relation to this?” Neal asked.

“Senator, you know I do not,” Wilson responded.

Though new regulations are currently being drafted, current Department of Correction’s protocol, which is in keeping with federal guidelines, requires doctors to prescribe any medication to inmates they deem medically necessary, including gender-affirming medication.

This approach is also in line with findings from major medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association.

Thomas referenced major medical association support of this type of health care during Thursday’s meeting, but Sen. Phillip Wheeler, R-Pikeville, who supported the bill, dismissed it.

“The American Medical Association endorsed cigarettes for probably 40 to 50 years before they changed their minds. Just because they’re on something one day doesn’t necessarily mean they’re correct.”

Wilson: ‘We can’t really trust’ DOC

The Kentucky Department of Corrections has never provided or paid for gender-affirming surgeries, an attorney with the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet told lawmakers last month.

“I don’t want to parse words: no gender-affirming surgery has happened, did happen or will happen,” Leah Boggs told lawmakers at that meeting.

But on Thursday, Wilson suggested three times that the department was lying, though he did not provide examples or evidence to back his comments.

“How many of these gender-reassignment surgeries have taken place or are taking place now in Kentucky? What’s the number?” Sen. Reggie Thomas, D-Lexington, asked.

Wilson said that though “the Department of Corrections has told us there are none that have taken place to this point, the way they went about introducing this into policy would call into question whether I could believe that or not.”

Thomas asked for “verifiable evidence.”

Wilson said the fact that 67 inmates were receiving gender-affirming medication “in itself is something that would lead me to believe that . . . they provide those surgeries as well. We can’t really trust that they’re not going to do that.”

In a response to Wilson’s comments Thursday, Justice and Public Safety Cabinet Communications Director Morgan Hall repeated what Boggs told lawmakers last month: “No taxpayer money has been spent on gender-reassignment surgeries for inmates.”

Beshear also repeated this point at his Thursday news conference, saying the department “has not provided funding for any gender-reassignment surgeries to any prisoners in our Department of Corrections.”

What the department has done, Beshear said, is follow the federal guidelines set out in the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Beshear said in December he doesn’t think trans inmates should be able to get gender-affirming surgery.

“There are a lot of people out there trying to make what is impacting less than 1% of the population really political, and that’s what they’re doing,” Beshear said. “All we’re trying to do is follow federal law.”

Before lawmakers voted largely along party lines to approve Senate Bill 2, Emma Curtis, councilwoman on the Lexington-Fayette Urban City Council and the only openly trans person in Kentucky currently in public office, called this type of health care “life-saving” and asked Republicans to vote in a “Christ-like manner.”

She then quoted Matthew 24:44-45 to the committee: “They will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, or a stranger or needing clothes, or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ And he will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, what ever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”

Thomas, who voted no on Wilson’s bill, questioned why Republicans were giving it such high priority.

“This is Senate Bill 2, folks. This is the second top priority of the Senate,” he said. “We’ve got over 600,000 (people) on Medicaid living in poverty. We’ve got a workforce participation rate that’s barely over 50%, far below the national average. We can’t even discuss minimum wage in this body.”

And yet, Thomas added, “our second top priority is that we want to deny 67 people medically necessary treatment. In my mind, that’s a distortion of our priorities.”

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