Kentucky enacted SB150 banning gender-affirming care for minors and restricting transgender students

On March 29, 2023, the Kentucky General Assembly overrode Gov. Andy Beshear's veto to enact Senate Bill 150, codified as Kentucky Acts Chapter 132. The Senate voted 29-8 and the House 76-23 to override, well above the simple-majority threshold Kentucky requires. The measure had begun the session as a narrow bill sponsored by Sen. Max Wise addressing student pronoun use, and was expanded through the legislative process into a wide-ranging law targeting transgender Kentuckians.

As enacted, SB150 bans gender-affirming medical care — including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery — for transgender minors, directing providers to detransition patients already receiving care. It also restricts which restrooms transgender students may use in public schools, limits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, and permits school staff to decline to use a student's chosen pronouns. Several of these school provisions carried an emergency clause and took effect immediately, while the medical-care ban took effect roughly ninety days after the session adjourned. Kentucky became the twelfth state to enact a ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

Gov. Beshear had vetoed the bill days earlier, warning it would harm vulnerable youth, but the Republican supermajority reversed him the same day it reconvened. The law singles out transgender minors and students for adverse treatment across health care, education, and facilities access, disadvantaging a class of people on the basis of gender identity.

Updates

2023-09-28 — Sixth Circuit reversed the preliminary injunction, allowing enforcement during litigation [4]

Parents of transgender children, represented by the ACLU of Kentucky and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, challenged the medical-care ban in Doe v. Thornbury. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit allowed Kentucky and Tennessee to enforce their bans while the litigation proceeded.

2025-06-18 — Supreme Court upheld the ban in United States v. Skrmetti [4]

Doe v. Thornbury was consolidated with Tennessee's L.W. v. Skrmetti before the U.S. Supreme Court as United States v. Skrmetti. On June 18, 2025, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee's ban, rejecting the constitutional challenge — a ruling that likewise left Kentucky's gender-affirming care ban in force.