Minnesota Becomes a Refuge for Gender-Affirming Care

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed an executive order last week to make the state a refuge for trans people who flee their homes in order to seek lifesaving transition-related care.

According to Executive Order 23-03, state agencies are to protect people seeking gender-affirming healthcare in Minnesota, as well as the entities that provide it, and they are specifically forbidden from providing information or assisting investigations to penalize trans people and their allies for seeking transition-related care. Judgments from other states that terminate parental rights because the parent provided their child with transition-related care will not be recognized, and the state will also refuse to comply with subpoenas that seek information about trans people who travel to Minnesota to obtain care.

Additionally, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) has been tasked with preparing a report that summarizes the literature on the safety and effectiveness of gender-affirming care, which will be presented to the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Legislature by the end of the year. The order also strengthens protections for insurance coverage of transition-related care and mandates MDH to refuse to approve HMO contracts that discriminate against people on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

The executive order comes alongside a bill HF 146, which would enshrine these same protections into Minnesota state law.

Introduced by Rep. Leigh Finke, the state’s first out, trans legislator, the bill will likely pass the House in the coming weeks, but Governor Walz told PBS that the escalating attacks on trans rights in other states made the need for such protections more urgent.

“Families who have fled are already here, and many more are planning to come,” Finke says in a statement to the Minnesota Reformer. “We’re going to be ready to take care of them, and to provide them with the health care they need.”

The executive order comes days after Florida introduced a bill that would allow the state to remove children from their parents’ custody if they are receiving gender-affirming care. Lawmakers in 19 states pledged in 2022 to introduce legislation that would establish their states as safe havens for trans refugees fleeing their homes to obtain care, with California being one of the first to actually sign its bill into law.