At the beginning of April, three North Carolina lawmakers introduced a new bill, the Youth Health Protection Act (Senate Bill 514). This bill would prevent health care professionals from performing any sort of gender confirmation surgery for transgender people on minors. Normally, in law minors are stated to be anyone under the age of 18, but this bill suggests anyone under the age of 21 would be considered a minor.

Additionally, this bill would also make it a requirement for anyone who is employed by the state to notify parents or appointed guardians if their child is displaying any desire to be treated in any way other than the gender they were assigned at birth. This means teachers and counselors would be forced to out students to their parents, no matter the situation at home. School is a place where many students learn to express themselves, and this bill would take away a safe environment from them. 

Unless there are major changes in North Carolina’s House and Senate, it is expected that this bill will not pass, looking at North Carolina’s recent history of LGBTQIA+ laws. Unfortunately, there are some other states where similar laws have been passed. Not long before the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA) proposed this bill, Arkansas passed Senate Bill 514 and became the first state to ban medical treatments for transgender minors in the United States. Despite the Governor vetoing the bill, the legislature voted to override the veto.

Arkansas’s bill being passed means that anyone younger than 18 years of age who would like to receive confirming hormone therapy, puberty blockers, or gender-confirmation surgeries is prohibited. So far this year, an additional fourteen states have passed a total of twenty-two bills that further restrict the rights of transgender minors. These states include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.

So, despite the fact it doesn’t look like North Carolina will pass this bill, it is being passed in other states, and many transgender minors are having their rights taken away.