Governor John Bel Edwards has fulfilled his promise to veto three bill targeting LGBTQ+ individuals, setting up the possibility of a showdown with legislators later this summer.
Edwards rejected House Bill 648, which would have prohibited health care professionals from providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth; House Bill 466, which would have prohibited teachers or others in schools from discussing sexual orientations or gender identities; and House Bill 81, which would have forced teachers and other school personnel to use a transgender student’s birth name rather than their chosen name or a nickname.
“This bill is entitled the ‘Stop Harming Our Kids Act,’ which is ironic because that is precisely what it does,” Edwards said about HB 648 in his veto letter for that item. “This bill denies healthcare to a very small, unique, and vulnerable group of children. It forces children currently stabilized on medication to treat a legitimate healthcare diagnosis to stop taking it. It threatens the professional licensure of the limited number of specialists who treat the healthcare needs of these children. It takes away parental rights to work with a physician to make important healthcare decisions for children experiencing a gender crisis that could quite literally save their lives. And, without doubt, it is part of a targeted assault on children that the bill itself deems not ‘normal.’”
Edwards criticized the three bills collectively in his veto message for HB 86.
“At its care, this bill is yet another example of a string of discriminatory bills being pushed by extreme groups around the country under the guise of religious freedom,” Edwards wrote. “But even if you accept the proponents’ religious freedom argument, the bill is fraught with serious, practical implementation issues.”
Edwards went further in his veto message for HB 466, saying that bill, like the others, “places vulnerable children at the front lines of a vicious culture war.”
Conservative legislators approved all three bills by veto-proof margins, with many leaders in the Republican caucus vowing to overturn any vetoes involving these bills. A veto session will take place in mid-July unless two-thirds of legislators turn in ballots to cancel the extraordinary session.