The floor of the Arkansas House of Representatives. (Photo by Brandon Rush, from Wikimedia Commons)
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) | Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed legislation April 5 that bans gender-confirming treatments or surgery for transgender youth, only to have the Republican-controlled House and Senate vote to override Hutchinson’s veto of the measure April 6.
The Republican governor rejected legislation that would have prohibited doctors from providing gender confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment.
“If (the bill) becomes law, then we are creating new standards of legislative interference with physicians and parents as they deal with some of the most complex and sensitive matters involving young people,” Hutchinson said at a news conference after he vetoed the bill.
The Republican Legislature was able to enact the measure since it only takes a simple majority of the House and Senate to override a governor’s veto in Arkansas. Hutchinson had said at the time of his veto that he believed an override was likely.
Hutchinson’s veto followed pleas from pediatricians, social workers and the parents of transgender youth who said the measure would harm a community already at risk for depression and suicide. Hutchinson said he met with doctors and transgender people as he considered whether to sign the measure.
He said he would have signed if it had just focused on gender confirming surgery, which currently isn’t performed on minors in the state. He noted it wouldn’t have exempted youth who are already undergoing treatment.
“The bill is over broad, extreme and does not grandfather those young people who are currently under hormone treatment,” he said “In other words, the young people who are currently under a doctor’s care will be without treatment when this law goes into effect.”
Opponents of the measure have vowed to sue to block the ban before it takes effect this summer.
Arkansas is one of a handful of states where it only takes a simple legislative majority to override a governor’s veto. The only other veto override attempt this year — over a bill Hutchinson rejected that would have required the state to refund fines levied on businesses for violating coronavirus safety rules — failed last month.
The treatment ban is the latest measure targeting transgender people that easily advanced in the Arkansas Legislature and other states this year. Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee’s governors have signed laws banning transgender girls and women from competing on school sports teams consistent with the gender identity.
In South Dakota, a transgender sports bill died after Republican Gov. Kristi Noem issued a partial veto. She issued an executive order immediately after the bill died that pushed public schools to issue bans, but critics say the order is merely a recommendation intended to salvage her reputation with social conservatives. Noem has promised to call a special legislative session to have lawmakers take up the issue again.
Hutchinson recently signed a measure allowing doctors to refuse to treat someone because of moral or religious objections, a law that opponents have said could be used to turn away LGBTQ patients.
It isn’t the first time Hutchinson has pushed back on measures targeting the LGBTQ community.
In 2017, he opposed legislation that would have prohibited transgender people from using government bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. That bathroom bill, which was opposed by tourism groups, never advanced beyond a Senate committee.
Hutchinson in 2015 urged lawmakers to rework a religious objections measure criticized by some of state’s largest employers as anti-gay. The governor ultimately signed a version of the measure that was revised to address those concerns.
