Kentucky legislators have introduced 14 anti-LGBTQ+ bills: Here’s what to know
As Kentucky’s 2024 Legislative Session continues, so does the controversy following the bills filed. This article will cover 5 more anti-LGBTQ+ bills, bringing the grand total to 14 anti-LGBTQ+ bills so far in this session.
The Fairness Campaign, Kentucky’s leading LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, has designated 12 bills as being anti-LGBTQ+. Of those 12, Queer Kentucky has covered 9, between our first and second updates of the session. Here, we will cover the other 3 named by Fairness, as well as another bill named by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The list below is of the bills The Fairness Campaign has designated as anti-LGBTQ+, paired with their nicknames for the bills:
Senate Bill 6: Anti-DEI Law – College Level
Senate Bill 93: Anti-DEI Law – K-12 Level
Senate Bill 147: Anti-Drag Bill
House Bill 5: Suffer KY Act
House Bill 9: DEI Destruction Act
House Bill 47: Anti-Fairness Law
House Bill 49: Healthcare Discrimination Law
House Bill 191: Book Burning Bill
House Bill 208: Tax Dollars for Private Schools
House Bill 304: Forced Student Outing (Senate Bill 150 Version 2.0)
House Bill 390: Strict Gender Binary Bill (Anti-Bostock Bill)
House Bill 402: Anti-Drag Bill
Of this list, these are the 4 that Queer Kentucky has yet to cover: Senate Bill 6: Anti-DEI Law – College Level, House Bill 5: Suffer KY Act, House Bill 208: Tax Dollars for Private Schools, and House Bill 191: Book Burning Bill. Additionally, the ACLU has listed 1 more Bill as anti-LGBTQ+, House Bill 452.
This brings the total of anti-LGBTQ+ bills in Kentucky to 14.
Senate Bill 6: “Anti-DEI Law – College Level”
Already cleared by the Kentucky Senate Committee, SB 6 is among SB 93 and HB 9 in attacking DEI, or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. The implementation of this bill limits what it refers to as “divisive concepts”, a subjective term that broadly covers evidence-based viewpoints such as anti-racist or LGBTQ+ affirming policies, beliefs, or trainings. This means that Kentucky’s public colleges and universities could no longer offer training programs that cover any topics considered potentially “divisive”, and the bill also prohibits any students or staff that refuse to endorse a “divisive concept, and protects students or staff that openly refuse to support such concepts or speak out against them. The phrase “divisive concepts” popped up around Trump’s 2020 executive order, and as noted in Louisville Public Media’s coverage on SB 6, the language used in this bill ties to the language in Trump’s federal efforts to attack DEI programming.
In addition to said divisive concepts, SB 6 lays out that public colleges and universities shall not be required to endorse,
“a specific ideology or political viewpoint to be eligible for hiring, contract renewal, tenure, promotion, or graduation and prohibit an institution from inquiring into the individual’s political or social viewpoints.”
Again, this language leaves room for personal opinion to be infused into the enforcement of this bill. There is no current ideological or political viewpoint required for the retaining of employment, so why is this bill being proposed?
Because there is a correlation between access to higher education and leaning more politically left, there is a history of conservative critics claiming higher education is a version of liberal indoctrination. The central argument is that higher education does not value politically conservative perspectives.
Further, SB 6 outlines legal recourse for anyone allegedly aggrieved by a violation of the Act, wherein, “any person aggrieved by a violation of this Act has a cause of action against the institution for damages.” That means that anyone required to respect someone’s pronouns in class, attend a training on anti-racism, or a student or staff member who is punished for exhibiting racist or transphobic behavior can sue the institution or any agents acting in an official capacity.
This is in line with SB 147, one of the anti-drag bills, which also outlines legal recourse for anyone allegedly aggrieved by a violation of the Act. Providing an outline of a cause of action in these bills could be read as a coordinated effort to create legal strife for the LGBTQ+ community and surrounding LGBTQ+ topics.
House Bill 5: “Suffer KY Act”
HB 5 proponents call it the Safer Kentucky Act, but opponents say it criminalizes the poor and unhoused.
The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy’s analysis of the “Suffer KY Act” gave 5 leading effects of the potential law:
- Increases criminal penalties for fentanyl in numerous ways
- Criminalizes Kentuckians for being poor and unhoused
- Creates harsher penalties for violent crime that do not make us safer and are not an appropriate response to current conditions
- Expands felonies, enhances penalties and restricts personal liberties, among other provisions
- Spends a large amount of state and local financial resources on these tried and failed approaches to public safety
HB 5 impacts Kentucky’s LGBTQ+ community as a vulnerable population. According to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law,
“Compared to non-LGBT people, the report finds that LGBT people have higher rates of poverty, lower rates of homeownership, and higher rates of homelessness. The report also finds that LGBT people face widespread discrimination in housing, mortgage lending, and homeless shelters and services.”
Further, the Trevor Project reports in its key findings that,
“Nearly half (44%) of Native/Indigenous LGBTQ youth have experienced homelessness or housing instability at some point in their life, compared to 16% of Asian American/Pacific Islander youth, 27% of White LGBTQ youth, 27% of Latinx LGBTQ youth, 26% of Black LGBTQ youth, and 36% of multiracial LGBTQ youth.
Homelessness and housing instability were reported at higher rates among transgender and nonbinary youth, including 38% of transgender girls/women, 39% of transgender boys/men, and 35% of nonbinary youth, compared to 23% of cisgender LGBQ youth.”
With a clear tie between being LGBTQ+ and being at a higher risk of being unhoused, SB 5 cannot be separated as a strictly economic piece of legislation when there are these social implications.
Further, KyPolicy notes how this bill increases criminal penalties surrounding using substances. With members of the LGBTQ+ community being twice as likely to use substances, Kentucky’s LGBTQ+ community will inevitably be impacted by this bill. There is a lot of stigma surrounding using substances, especially when usage is heavily criminalized and framed as personal failure, instead of treated as a social problem to address together and with care.
LGBTQ+ populations face, “social stigma,” “discrimination,” “harassment,” “violence,” and “other stressors” not encountered by people who are heteronormative and adherent to the gender binary – contributing to higher substance usage within the community.
House Bill 208: Tax Dollars for Private Schools
After two Kentucky Supreme Court decisions ruled that tax dollars earmarked for education must be spent on public school systems, legislators are attempting to divert tax dollars to private and charter schools once again, but this time through a constitutional amendment. HB 208 would add a question on the ballot in November, asking voters if they want to amend the Constitution of Kentucky to allow money to be pulled from the public to then be distributed by private means, investing in private programs at the expense of the public education system.
GLSEN released an Issue Brief on Private School Programs, outlining that the efforts to use taxpayer funds to subsidize private school programs, “continues to put LGBTQ+ students and educators, particularly those who are also Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC), and people with disabilities, at greater risk.”
Further outlined by GLSEN’s brief, “these programs primarily fund private religious schools that can sanction discrimination.” Here in Kentucky, opponents argue that HB 208 is taking much needed dollars from already underfunded public school systems, in a state that ranks in the lower half of educational achievement nationwide.
House Bill 191: Book Burning Bill
On the heels of Senate Bill 5, nicknamed the Book Banning bill of the 2023 legislative session, House Bill 191 furthers the impact of national efforts to undermine diverse educational resources in the name of the dog whistles of parental rights and protecting children.
HB 191 would require each local board of education to,
“adopt a complaint resolution policy for its local schools to be used to address complaints submitted by parents or guardians alleging that material, a program, or an event that is harmful to minors…”
Again, this bill is subjective, allowing for personal opinions to heavily influence aspects of society that are public. HB 191 defines “harmful to minors” as material, programs, or events that have references to sex or genitalia, have too much interest in sex, or those that are “patently offensive to prevailing standards regarding what is suitable for minors”. Here, parents would be allowed to regulate what every child is allowed to access. With last year’s omnibus anti-LGBTQ+ bill SB 150, there was room for people with certain opinions to use the bill to push personal agendas. For example, in Boyle County, the Superintendent banned 100+ LGBTQ+ books from the school district, citing SB 150. This illustrates how the general intent of the bill can be unclear, but in practice, it is clear who and what is being targeted. Amongst the other bills, this Book Banning bill is a part of the same national playbook to attack LGBTQ+ communities.
As Queer Kentucky covered in an article last year, critics following Book Banning bills name the efforts of the bills as aligned with the efforts of Moms for Liberty. This organization has been named as “extremist” by civil rights watchdog organizations with their efforts to push censorship and book bans. Censorship as a means of social control has been used across centuries and continents, with specific national ties around regulating Black history and LGBTQ+ history.
Designated by the American Civil Liberties Union as anti-LGBTQ+ in their digital tracker, HB 452 is designated as “Other Anti-LGBTQ bills.” Without specific designation by the website, it can be drawn from the bill itself that this bill is another attempt at using DEI language to regulate financial institutions – paired with the regulation attempts in medical institutions (HB 49) and educational institutions (HB 9, SB 6, and SB 93). This bill would not allow banks to close the accounts of, refuse to serve, or restrict customers based on their “social credit score.”
In the section defining a “social credit score,” this bill would bar financial institutions from regulating the providing of services to anyone who fails or refuses to “conduct any type of racial, diversity, or gender audit or disclosure”, anyone who fails or refuses to “provide any form of quota, preference, or benefit based, in whole or part, on race, diversity, or gender…”, participates in “manufacturing, distribution, wholesale, supply, or retail of 12 firearms, firearms accessories, or ammunition”, and more.
This means that the bill would not allow for financial institutions to turn away potential customers if they exhibit what some might consider to be bigoted behavior – by refusing to participate in any identification surrounding identity. This regulates the liberty and recordkeeping of private financial institutions, regulating their ability to choose customers just like every other private business has the legal right to do. By putting this into law, it could allow for other laws down the road to codify discrimination. This is again similar to the bill regulating DEI language in medical institutions, HB 49, where the bill is framed as widely supporting the First Amendment (freedom of speech) of doctors, but the impact falls on just protecting the speech and actions of those who are expressing anti-LGBTQ sentiment.
But, this bill is not just aiming to regulate selectivity around choosing patrons based on gender diversity. It is also attempting to regulate that financial institutions cannot regulate their own business associations based on: whether that business “facilitates or assists employees in obtaining abortions or gender reassignment services”, deals with fossil fuels, or deals with firearms/ firearm accessories/ ammunition. This bill forces financial institutions to work with businesses regardless of that business’s practices or morally aligned mission, which again forces a private business to lose autonomy in choosing who they can provide services to.
These types of regulations allow for more space for harm and violence toward LGBTQ+ communities, and the legislative efforts to do this create social and cultural impacts where people get bolder in their bigotry – because they are legally safer to be that way. As well, this bold attempt to regulate private businesses based on these terms show where the political allegiances lie here: with businesses who want to deny their employees the ability to access reproductive justice and gender affirming surgery, businesses who utilize DEI systems, and businesses dealing with the widely controversial distribution of fossil fuels and or guns.
