LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The next Kentucky legislative session is less than a month away, and activist groups, like the Fairness Campaign, say they are gearing up for another hard year. 

What You Need To Know

  • Several anti-LGBTQ+ bills were filed during the 2023 legislative session

  • It includes the broad-reaching Senate Bill 150, which impacts trans youth

  • Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, expects more of these bills next year

  • Kentucky and 18 other states passed legislation that would ban gender-affirming care for minors this year

Since the early ‘90s, the Fairness Campaign has advocated on behalf of Kentucky’s LGBTQ+ citizens. It also passed fairness ordinances in several cities, which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. 

The organization’s leader, Chris Hartman, describes the 2023 session as one of his most difficult.

“It’s been my worst legislative session in 15 legislative sessions that I made it through, and we faced almost more bills this year than all of the previous legislative sessions that I worked combined,” Hartman said. 

Kentucky lawmakers introduced several bills this year targeting the LGBTQ+ community. One proposal attempted to restrict where drag performances could be held, but it did not pass. 

However, Senate Bill 150 did.

The broad-reaching anti-trans law bars youth from accessing gender transition care, allows teachers to mis-gender kids, and prevents gender identity from being discussed in schools. 

“The suicide rates are outrageous, you know it, you seem to not care, not one of you have talked about it. What is the intent of this bill, what is the point,” Hartman exclaimed during a February committee meeting on Senate Bill 150. 

Hartman expects lawmakers will try to expand this law even further. He also believes drag performances will be brought up again.

“There are many bills that they’ve been trying for several years that have not passed. One of them is a health care discrimination law that would go far beyond denying trans kids' health care but would allow any worker in a health care setting to deny service to someone based on their religious or their philosophical beliefs,” Hartman said. 

Throughout the session, many flocked to the Capitol in opposition of these anti-LGBTQ+ bills, including trans kids and their families. Hartman says they will be back.

“They have awakened a beast that they did not expect, which is the entire LGBTQ+ community that now is much more informed and aware of how the legislative process works, and they’re going to be participating in it like never before,” Hartman said. 

He adds the best way people can influence their lawmakers is by making their own stories heard. 

A recent report from the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute estimates that in Kentucky, there are around two thousand people under 18 who are transgender. That accounts for less than a tenth of 1% of the state population.

Lawmakers on the other side of the aisle had a different view of the highly debated Senate Bill 150. Its supporters say the law bolsters parental rights and protects children.

Republican Speaker Pro Tem State Representative David Meade, who carried the bill in the House, expanded on that point in a March floor speech ahead of its passage.  

“We need to ensure that surgery or drugs that completely alter their lives and alter their body is not something we should be allowing until they are adults who could choose that for themselves. This is the right thing to do,” Meade said. 

In 2023, Kentucky and 18 other states passed legislation that would ban gender-affirming care for minors. Earlier this year, the ACLU of Kentucky sued to allow that care to remain legal but was unsuccessful.

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