House passes bill to criminalize gender transition care for minors with some support from Democrats

The House passed a bill Wednesday that would criminalize gender transition treatment for minors.

The measure, sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., passed 216-211 with some bipartisan support.

Reps. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas, and Don Davis, D-N.C., voted with most Republicans for the bill, while Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Gabe Evans, R-Colo., and Mike Kennedy, R-Utah, voted with most Democrats against the measure.

“Children are NOT experiments. No more drugs. No more surgeries. No more permanent damage. We must let children grow up without adult manipulation to make life-changing decisions! Congress must protect America’s children!!!” Greene wrote about X before the vote.

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Greene had struck a deal with House leaders to introduce her bill in exchange for supporting a rule last week to advance the National Defense Authorization Act.

The bill faces a high hurdle to passing the Senate, as Republicans would need support from Democrats to approve the legislation in the upper chamber.

The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the House vote, saying the measure “would have immediate and devastating effects on the lives of transgender youth and their families across the country.”

“Politicians should never prohibit parents from doing what is best for their transgender children,” Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs at the ACLU, said in a statement. “These families often spend years thinking about how to best provide for their children, but ill-equipped politicians intervene by attempting to criminalize the health care they, their children, and their doctors believe is necessary for their children to thrive.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had struck a deal with House leadership to introduce her bill in exchange for supporting a rule last week to advance the National Defense Authorization Act. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

“But this bill also sets an incredibly dangerous precedent far beyond the specific care at issue, by criminalizing care based on ideology and placing Washington politicians between families and their doctors,” he continued. “We strongly condemn the passage of this measure and urge members of the Senate to do everything in their power to prevent it from becoming law.”

Greene and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, clashed over the bill before it passed. The Georgia congresswoman, who is due to resign next month, had criticized Roy, who sits on the House Rules Committee, for introducing an amendment that she said would “gut the commerce clause.”

Roy’s amendment attempted to modify the bill to limit federal criminal liability in certain circumstances “by defining when prohibited conduct falls within federal jurisdiction,” according to the Rules Committee.

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The ACLU criticized the House’s passage of the decision, saying the measure “would have immediate and devastating effects on the lives of transgender youth and their families across the country.” (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

But Greene argued that her bill “criminalizes ALL pediatric gender-affirming care (transgender surgeries, puberty blockers and hormones) NOT just those that receive federal funds and protects ALL children by allowing them to grow up before making permanent changes to their bodies that they can never undo!!!”

“What is Chip Roy doing????? And this guy wants to be attorney general of Texas but refuses to protect children??!!!” she wrote about X.

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Roy responded that “the Constitution is important and we should not bastardize it by using ‘interstate commerce’ to empower federal authorities.”

The Texas Republican, however, said in a statement Wednesday that he would not propose the amendment “to avoid confusion about how Republicans are united in protecting children from these grotesque procedures.”