By Annelise Hanshaw
Over 100 people traveled to the Missouri Capitol Monday to testify against bills that would place additional restrictions on transgender children.
(Photo- From left, state Reps. Brian Seitz, Jamie Gragg, Hardy Billington and Ben Baker present identical bills seeking to remove a sunset on a gender-affirming care ban for minors-Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
Some brought posters to show their opposition to the legislation. Others made more subtle gestures, like crocheting in the colors of the transgender flag.Democratic lawmakers placed blue and pink cups reminiscent of the transgender flag on their desks bearing the message “Be strong, be you!”
The eight hours of discussion, stretching past midnight, focused on two bills that aim to bolster laws passed in 2023
barring transgender students from competing in sports according to their gender identity and
restricting gender-affirming care for minors.
It is the third year in a row swathes of LGBTQ+ community members have testified before the House’s Emerging Issues Committee for hours on end, unsuccessfully pleading lawmakers to abandon bills they argue are unnecessary and cruel.
Hours before the committee hearing, state Rep. Wick Thomas, a Democrat from Kansas City and Missouri’s first nonbinary lawmaker, stood alongside other Democratic representatives to announce the creation of the Equality Caucus in Missouri’s House to advocate for minorities.
Identical bills by GOP state Reps. Hardy Billington, Brian Seitz, Jamie Gragg and Ben Baker would remove an expiration date on the gender-affirming-care ban and further restrict people under 18 from continuing the prescriptions issued prior to the 2023 law.
Lawmakers in 2023, in a
compromise spurred by a Democratic filibuster in the Missouri Senate, wrote in a grandfather clause allowing existing prescriptions to remain active.
Medical providers revoked the prescriptions anyway in fear of heightened medical malpractice standards the law established.
The law is set to expire in 2027.
Billington, a Poplar Bluff Republican, said he filed the legislation to protect children from “permanent consequences from a decision they are not mature enough to make.”
Seitz, a Republican from Branson, voiced a similar sentiment, saying: “We love these children so much that we want to protect them.”
Asked whether he had talked to transgender children and their parents, Seitz said he has “talked to none.”
Jamie Reed, a former case worker at the Washington University Transgender Center and vocal opponent of gender-affirming care, said her experience at the center raised concerns about how children were being treated. Her worries became public in February of 2023, when her story was published nationally and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey
announced an investigation into the Transgender Center.
The center has since closed because of the 2023 law’s provision allowing expansive lawsuits against providers.
“I saw directly the patients were harmed by these interventions,” she said. “Mental health got worse after initiation at regret mourn the permanent changes to their bodies.”
Reed is one of six who spoke in favor of the bill.
Kenneth Haller, a recently retired pediatrician, was the first to testify in opposition. He said gender-affirming care is “time sensitive,” and transgender adolescents are harmed when they can’t access medication at certain stages of development.
“I can’t think of any other procedure, any other treatment that kids undergo that might be painful, or might be exhausting, where a legislature has felt the need to take it away,” Haller told the committee.
Ben Greene, an author from St. Louis, said it felt freeing to learn the word “transgender” and have a name for what he was experiencing.
“I watched in horror as my body changed in ways that I knew were wrong,” he said. “There was just a constant feeling of standing in front of the mirror, often for hours at a time, feeling like I had no sense of recognition of the person looking back at me.”
He didn’t begin taking hormones until he was a young adult, and he tried to hide his body from himself and others in the meantime.
It was “too late” for his body to have some characteristics of a man, such as his feet that are too small for the men’s shoes in stores.
“I had to try my best to undo a puberty that I shouldn’t have had to go through,” Greene said.
Just over 50 people testified in opposition to the bill, including a lobbyist for the City of St. Louis.
Transgender athletes
The 2023 law restricting transgender athletes is also set to expire in 2027. Billington, Seitz and state Rep. Bennie Cook filed bills revoking the expiration date.
“By removing the sunset, we renew our commitment safeguarding opportunities for young women in sports for years to come,” Cook, a Houston Republican, told committee members.
Cook said he has a daughter who plays basketball.
“I don’t want boys on her team. I don’t want boys in her locker room. I don’t want that,” he said. “I don’t think anyone would want a boy on their team.”
State Rep. Brad Christ, a Republican who represents parts of St. Louis County and chairs the emerging issues committee, said he worries about his three daughters.
“I don’t even like my preschool son playing sports with my older daughters because his aggression is at such a higher level than my daughters that are five, six years older than him,” he said. “So, this is a pretty black and white issue for me.”
Seitz presented the legislation as a continuation of the women’s-rights movement, asking people to think of their “mothers and grandmothers who fought so hard for equality.”
“Allowing biological males to continue women’s sports destroys fair competition and women’s athletic opportunities,” he said. “We need to remove the sunset permanently to save the future of women’s sports.”
Christ also saw the bill as an extension of feminism, asking a representative from a nonpartisan organization why Democrats were not in favor.
“The Democratic Party is a party of feminism, women’s rights. And this discussion right now, it’s just hypocrisy and contradictory statements are just through the roof,” he said.
He expects the bill to split along partisan lines, he said.
Shannon Cooper, a lobbyist representing the City of Kansas City, testified against the bill.
“(Transgender kids) just want to fit in,” he said, “and sports give them that avenue.”
He estimated that this would be the longest House hearing of the 2025 legislative session, saying the city is grappling with more pressing issues.
“It is just making a lot of kids out there feel very vulnerable,” Cooper said, “and they are less than 2% of the population.”
State Rep. Emily Weber, a Democrat from Kansas City, said the legislation is driving people out of the state.
“We are also losing out on money,” she said. “We’re talking about millions of dollars that are taken away from Missouri and into another state because they left because of these bills.”
Baker, who is on the committee, said he doesn’t like “when people talk about money over the safety of my daughters.”
“I really do struggle with why Kansas City would not want to protect our daughters,” he said.
Cooper responded that “inequity runs rampant.”
“I’m here tonight to talk about this issue, but if you want to talk about other inequities towards women, we’re going to be here,” he said. “You can’t have it both ways.”
Others gave personal experiences.
Landon Patterson, of Kansas City, said she never felt welcomed in the boys’ locker room in high school. When she began competing with the girls’ volleyball team and wearing a women’s cheerleading outfit on the squad, she felt a sense of belonging.
“I got to be normal like every other kid, which is all anyone wants, trans or not,” she said. “It was liberating.”
The committee did not take action on either bill Monday and will likely vote at a future meeting.
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