COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio House voted Wednesday to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto on a bill that would dually ban minors from gender-affirming care and transgender girls and women from playing on female sports teams in K-12 and college.
The Republican-dominated House overrode the veto of House Bill 68 with the required 60% supermajority: 65 to 28, mostly along party lines.
HB 68 now heads back to the Ohio Senate, where the veto override also needs at least 60% of the vote. The next Senate session is scheduled for Jan. 24. Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman has indicated that he also favors an override.
DeWine, a Republican like most of the members of the legislature, said he vetoed the bill after talking to families and medical experts who provide gender-affirming care. He concluded that health care decisions for a child experiencing gender dysphoria are difficult and should be made by parents in consultation with medical experts, and not by government. Families told him that without access to puberty suppressants and hormones, he said, their children wouldn’t be alive today.
On the floor, the debate was animated, with applause, shouts and booing at some points. After the vote, people in the gallery yelled, “Shame,” several times. One person called the legislature murderers.
State Rep. Gary Click, a Sandusky County Republican who is the bill’s sponsor, believes that the distribution of hormones and puberty suppressants to children is reckless and harmful.
Click credited DeWine for last week’s emergency order that prohibits children with gender dysphoria from getting gender-affirming surgeries. Very few of those surgeries are performed in Ohio and across the country on minors, according to Ohio’s children’s hospitals, many of which run gender clinics.
Click said that he doesn’t doubt the sincerity or hearts of families that seek gender-affirming care for their children. But he also heard people say they detransitioned, and what they once thought was gender dysphoria was other mental health issues.
“We cannot continue falling into the trap of allowing children to self-diagnose,” he said.
Click also said that children’s hospitals are too quick to push children to receive gender-affirming care.
“Why in the world do we live in a society that says to our children that you need to have a scalpel and hormones to be your authentic self?” he said. “That is hurtful and harmful. That is horrible.”
Rep. Jena Powell, a Darke County Republican who sponsored a standalone sports ban bill (that bill was merged into HB 68 in June), said that the sports ban is needed because transgender girls and women are physically stronger and have other biological advantages. They’re taking championships, scholarships and other opportunities from other girls and women.
“We want everyone in the state of Ohio to compete fair and to accomplish this we must protect the integrity of women’s sports,” Powell said. “The reason we have women’s sports divisions is because males will always have physical and biological advances.”
If the Senate joins the House in the veto override, Ohio will become the 24th state since 2020 to enact a sports ban and the 23rd state to enact a minor medical care ban.
Less than 1% of Ohio’s population is transgender, according to estimates. Fewer than 15 transgender students a year have used the Ohio High School Athletic Association’s policy for trans girls asking to play on female teams, which requires them to demonstrate they’ve been taking hormones for at least a year or show by way of sound medical evidence they don’t possess any physical or physiological advances over genetic females in bone structure, muscle mass and testosterone.
Despite such low numbers of transgender people, Republicans have found the issue resonates with voters – especially as candidates enter the 2024 election season. Public polling has shown most Ohioans and Americans support Republicans’ positions on these issues, although transgender advocates believe views are fast shifting.
Democrats and groups that advocate for transgender Ohioans described the veto as devastating.
Rep. Beth Liston, a Columbus-area Democrat who works as a physician outside the legislature, including with transgender children, said that evidence-based, gender-affirming care is necessary for all children. She apologized to the transgender community, but noted that Ohioans in November voted to enshrine abortion rights, which shows people are increasingly standing up for their health care rights.
“There is some hope,” she said. “Over the last several months, we have seen the power of activism at the ballot box. People have seen through misinformation and messaging to stand up.”
Moments after the vote the ACLU of Ohio released a statement criticizing the House.
“We are extremely disappointed that the Ohio House continued their crusade against transgender youth and their families by returning early for an emergency session to override the Governor’s veto on HB 68,” it said. “This state-sponsored vendetta against some of Ohio’s most vulnerable young people is beyond cruel.”
