Tennessee Senate Passes Bill Making "Recruiting" For Trans Youth Care A Felony
www.erininthemorning.com
The bill could have far ranging impacts in Tennessee and outside of the state, and could be broadly used to target health care professionals across state lines.

Tennessee has recently passed a bill, effective July 1st 2024, declaring it a class-C felony to “recruit, harbor, or transport an unemancipated minor within this state” for transgender healthcare procedures, carrying a sentence of 3-15 years in prison. This applies over state lines and states that do not have anti-extradition laws relating to trans rights can extradite you to Tennessee.

Notably: the bill is vague. This means: telling stories of your own transition, describing your healthcare experiences to an open group chat, describing your trans experiences on a public website, creating trans health guides online, describing how you have gotten DIY HRT, describing anything to do with trans healthcare, even as a cis person, can result in a class-C felony conviction.

Given that being arrested in any capacity for transgender people can be an incredibly dangerous experience (CW: SV), I strongly suggest you begin caring about opsec, stop referring to where you live, use VPNs, stop using apps like Discord, and stop using social media sites that track your IP or user agent fingerprint while unprotected. Remember that for a bill like this to be challenged in court, you have to be arrested first.

Will discuss creating / linking to a transgender matrix chat so that we can help people to move off of things like discord.

  • SchadrachEnglish
    2•7 months ago

    For anyone curious, here’s the bill in question: https://publications.tnsosfiles.com/acts/113/pub/pc1064.pdf

    Apparently they dropped it being a felony in final version of the bill, it is now a cause for civil liability to “intentionally recruit, harbor, or transport an unemancipated minor within this state for the purpose of receiving a prohibited medical procedure under this chapter, regardless of where the medical procedure is to be procured.” There are exceptions cut out for common carriers, the minor’s parents or guardians, and anyone designated by the minor’s parents or guardians and the civil action can only be initiated by the minor’s parents or guardians.

    I’m curious what counts as “recruiting” kids for trans health care.