Like every year before, 2024 is shaping up to be another landmark year for anti-LGBTQ legislation proposed around the country. Last year, we looked at the Oklahoma Millstone Act, which aimed to prohibit medical professionals in the state from providing gender-affirming care to anyone under 26 years old. In 2019, we took a closer look at Sexual Education Policies in schools, including a South Dakota bill which would have banned teachers from talking about gender identity or gender expression with their pupils from kindergarten through seventh grade. We also looked at an Ohio bill that would have required teachers, counselors, and health care professionals to notify parents if their child identifies as transgender or has spoken to them about questioning their gender identity. This week, we’ll be taking a look at a new bill out of Missouri that has taken the news cycles by storm.
What is this new Missouri bill?
HB2885 aims to do two pretty intense things. First, establish “the offense of contributing to social transition” and second, require a person found guilty of the offense of “contributing to social transition” to be placed on the sexual offender registry. Okay…what does this mean?
In the bill, “social transition” is defined as “the process by which an individual adopts the name, pronouns, and gender expression, such as clothing or haircuts, that match the individual's gender identity and not the gender assumed by the individual's sex at birth.”
Executive director of the GLO Center in Springfield, Aaron Schekorra, had this to say related to this call out of “social transitions” in the bill:
“So a lot of people, when they think of the transgender community, oftentimes those conversations centered around medical transitions. Social transition is the other aspect of that, which is often what we see when we’re talking about students changing their name, and then going by the correct pronouns that are along with the gender that they identify as, rather than the gender that was assigned to them at birth.”
The bill also defines a child as a person under 18. Teacher has three different designations under the bill related to tenure:
- "Permanent teacher", any teacher who has been employed in the same school district for five successive years.
- "Probationary teacher", any teacher who has been employed in the same school district for five successive years or less.
- "Teacher", any employee of a school district, except a metropolitan school district, regularly required to be certified under laws relating to the certification of teachers, except superintendents and assistant superintendents but including certified teachers who teach at the prekindergarten level in a nonmetropolitan public school within a prekindergarten program in which no fees are charged to parents or guardians.
The bill states “A person commits the offense of contributing to social transition if the person is acting in his or her official capacity as a teacher or school counselor and the person provides support, regardless of whether the support is material, information, or other resources to a child regarding social transition.”
The offense of “contributing to social transition” would be a class E Felony, and the teacher would be required to register as a Tier I sex offender with the state within three business days of their conviction. In Missouri, class E felonies are punishable by up to four years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Tier I sex offenders are required by a Missouri statute to remain on the Sex Offender Register for 15 years. Sex offenders in Missouri are not allowed to be within 500 feet of any school building, meaning if teachers had to register, they would be unable to work at a school, effectively be ending their career. Other Tier I offenses in the state include:
- Sexual abuse in the first degree - if a person “subjects another person to sexual contact when that person is incapacitated, incapable of consent, or lacks the capacity to consent, or by the use of forcible compulsion”
- Sexual misconduct involving a child - including “knowlying exposing genitals to a child less than fifteen years of age under circumstances in which he or she knows that his or her conduct is likely to cause affront or alarm to the child”
- Possession of child pornography - if a “person knowingly or recklessly possesses any child pornography of a minor less than eighteen years of age or obscene material portraying what appears to be a minor less than eighteen years of age”
- Trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation - “a person knowingly recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, advertises the availability of or obtains by any means, including but not limited to through the use of force, abduction, coercion, fraud, deception, blackmail, or causing or threatening to cause financial harm, another person for the use or employment of such person in a commercial sex act, sexual conduct, a sexual performance, or the production of explicit sexual material without consent”
- Sex with an animal - any touching of an animal with the genitals or any touching of the genitals or anus of an animal for the purpose of arousing or gratifying the person's sexual desire.
Missouri state Rep. Jamie Gragg, sponsor of the bill, said the bill’s goal is to “put the social learning development of our children back in the hands of the parents. Ultimately, whose children are these? They belong to the family that they come from. If there is a situation where they don’t have that parental or guardian to go back on or to talk to, there is other help, professional help they can get.”
Last year, Missouri also proposed similar legislation to this, the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act.
What is the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act?
The Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, or MO SB134, would have prohibited the discussion of gender identity or sexual orientation by school personnel. This bill was proposed in January of 2023, and died in May last year. The bill also would have prohibited school officials from withholding information regarding a student's gender identity from the student's parent. If the bill had passed, school officials would have been required to inform a student's parent within twenty-four hours if the student ‘expressed confusion’ about their gender identity or requested to use personal pronouns differing from their sex as registered by the parent during enrollment.
If a teacher violated these would be rules, they would have faced charges of incompetence, immorality, and neglect of duty under the laws governing the “discipline of holders of certificate of license to teach”. Even more, a parent of a minor child who had asked to use different pronouns would have been allowed to bring a civil action against a school district or public school. The attorney general also could have brought a civil action against any school district or public school in violation.
Alabama did pass a Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, in 2022. Their bill prohibits the administration of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries on minors who experience gender dysmorphia. The bill also prohibited counselors, teachers, principals, nurses, and other school officials from withholding information from parents about their child’s perception that their gender or sex is inconsistent with their sex assigned at birth.
This bill was initially blocked in a suit, Boe v. Marshall, but at the beginning of this year the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order allowing the bill to take effect.
South Carolina introduced a Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act last year, but it remains in committee. Last year, Oklahoma passed SB613. This bill bans gender-affirming care for minors, and threatens health care professionals who provide care with the possibility of a felony charge.
Cover Photo by Taylor Heery on Unsplash
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