(The Center Square) – The Nevada Assembly Committee on Commerce and Labor has advanced a bill seeking to protect people who provide transgender patients with medical treatment.
Senate Bill 171 is now heading to the Assembly floor after committee members passed it 9-5 last week. The bill previously made it through the state Senate.
State Sens. James Ohrenschall and Melanie Scheible, both D-Las Vegas, introduced this legislation. Democrats hold majorities in both chambers of the Legislature.
Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo has not issued a statement on whether he will sign SB 171 if it’s passed. In 2023, he vetoed SB 302, which have protected health care providers providing gender-affirming care from losing their medical licenses. But that same year, Lombardo signed SB 163, which required health care insurance companies and Medicaid to cover gender-affirming treatments.
SB 171 prevents a Nevada health care licensing board from punishing a person who administers someone medically necessary gender-affirming health care services. The bill defines those services as ones medical professionals find to be appropriate based on a person’s request.
The types of procedures in this definition include stopping puberty-related physical changes, administering hormone therapy, helping people with gender dysphoria and developing care for people to explore their gender identity.
This bill does not include conversion therapy in this definition.
SB 171 defines medically necessary as a health care service or product a provider would give to someone to “prevent, diagnose or treat an illness, injury or disease, or any symptoms.”
Furthermore, the bill proposes not letting state agencies help with out-of-state investigations unless forced to by a court order.
If another state is trying to penalize someone providing legal gender-affirming care, Nevada won’t share any information under the bill. However, if gender affirming care elsewhere is illegal, then Nevada will help that state.
The bill’s protections don’t apply to gender-affirming care received by minors without parental consent.
State Assemblymember Toby Yurek, R-Henderson, who voted against SB 171, was the only person on the committee to speak up during discussion. He said he did not have concerns about the bill’s “underlying policy” but rather the “potential unintended consequences.”
Yurek said he worried about how SB 171 would affect “the lack of cooperation on disciplinary matters” with other “compact licensures” the committee is working on.
