Missouri has banned the use of tax dollars to pay for so-called gender transition procedures of trans-identified inmates, joining efforts at both the state and federal levels to restrict public funding for such interventions.
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Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed House Bill 2009 into law Tuesday, following the bill’s passage by the Republican-controlled Missouri Senate with no opposition. The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives advanced the legislation in a 107-39 vote, with most Republicans voting in favor and most Democrats opposed.
The legislation, which primarily deals with funding for the Department of Corrections, contains a provision declaring, “No funds shall be expended for any cross-sex hormones, or gender transition surgery undertaken for the purpose of any gender transition.”
The conservative nonprofit legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom praised Kehoe for signing legislation prohibiting the use of tax dollars to fund gender transition procedures for inmates.
“We applaud Gov. Kehoe for protecting Missouri taxpayers from being forced to fund harmful transition drugs and surgeries,” said ADF Senior Counsel Matt Sharp in a statement. “Growing medical evidence demonstrates that these procedures are neither safe nor effective in treating gender dysphoria. And no amount of drugs or surgeries can change a person’s sex. Instead, states should prioritize counseling to help individuals address the underlying causes of their distress and find comfort with their bodies.”
Kehoe’s approval of House Bill 2009 comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order at the beginning of his second term last year titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
The executive order directs the U.S. Attorney General to ensure that “no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”
Last year, Georgia took similar action to ensure that no tax dollars were used to fund sex change procedures for inmates in state prisons. Georgia’s legislation contained limited exceptions allowing public funding of transition surgeries for intersex inmates, the continuation of interventions already deemed medically necessary and the continuation of treatments for inmates already undergoing them so they could begin “transitioning off therapy.”
In other states, taxpayers have funded transition procedures for trans-identified inmates, either through legislation passed by state lawmakers or through court decisions.
A 2023 report from The Washington Free Beacon found that $4 million in public funds in California have gone to such interventions since the state became the first in the country to use government funding to pay for inmates’ gender transition procedures in 2017.
In 2024, a federal judge in Indiana ordered the Indiana Department of Corrections to pay for the transition procedures of a trans-identified male inmate convicted of strangling his 11-month-old stepdaughter to death, concluding that failure to do so constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The state of Indiana appealed the ruling.
More than a decade ago, a federal judge in Massachusetts reached the same conclusion, issuing an order requiring the use of public funds to pay for convicted murderer Robert Kosilek to undergo gender transition procedures. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court ruling, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied Kosilek’s appeal three years later.
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This article was originally published at The Christian Post. Photo Credit: welcomia via Canva Teams.
