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(LifeSiteNews) — The Tennessee Senate has passed legislation which would allow patients to sue doctors for coercing them into undergoing so-called “gender reassignment” surgeries.
The measure, Senate Bill 2031, was passed on Monday, March 23, 2026, and is now moving to the House. It “creates a civil cause of action against a healthcare professional by a person who suffered an injury that resulted from certain medical procedures if the reason the person, or the person’s parent, guardian, or legal representative, consented to the medical procedure was due in whole or in part to coercion by the healthcare professional.”
The bill authorizes an individual 18 or older “to bring a civil action to recover compensatory damages, punitive damages, and reasonable attorney fees, court costs, and expenses against a healthcare professional for an injury that is a result of a medical procedure,” if two criteria are met:
- The medical procedure was for the purpose of enabling the person to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the person’s sex or treating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the person’s sex and asserted identity. As used in this provision, “sex” means a person’s immutable characteristics of the reproductive system that define the individual as male or female, as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.
- The person consented, or if the person was a minor at the time of the medical procedure, the person’s parent, guardian, or legal representative consented, in whole or in part, due to an act of coercion by the healthcare professional.
The bill defines “medical procedure” to means “surgically removing, modifying, altering, or entering into tissues, cavities, or organs of a human being” or “prescribing, administering, or dispensing any puberty blocker or hormone to a human being.”
“Gender-affirming” drugs and surgeries have been linked to suicidality, bone density loss, heart diseases, stroke, cancer, and numerous other medical problems. Intended to stop normal pubertal development, puberty blockers can also cause infertility.
Libs of TikTok said news of the bill’s passage is “MASSIVE”.
“Sue these evil monsters into the ground then lock them up for life!” urged the conservative influencer on X.
Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision upholdingTennessee’s law protecting minors from undergoing so-called “gender transitions,” including surgeries and puberty blocking or cross-sex hormone drugs for children under age 18.
The measure, which had sailed through the Tennessee House in a sweeping 77-16 vote, was signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee in 2023.
It stated explicitly that a “healthcare provider shall not knowingly perform or offer to perform on a minor, or administer or offer to administer to a minor, a medical procedure if the performance or administration of the procedure is for the purpose of: (A) Enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex; or (B) Treating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”
The Volunteer State’s new legislation is emblematic of a rising backlash against the gender ideology movement.
Shortly after taking office last year, President Trump signed an executive orderending taxpayer funding to institutions that commit the procedures.
“Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions,” wrote Trump in his January 28, 2025 executive order. “This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”
