Even children are at risk: South Carolina’s new law was outlaw transgender medical for everyone.

On Thursday, South Carolina’s Senate Medical Affairs Committee heard a singular bill that would harm the state’s trans people in a slew of concerning ways.

House Bill 4624 seeks to amend the state’s Code of Laws Title 44, which deals with health. Specifically, it seeks to amend the code’s Chapter 42 with efforts to redefine gender, sex and other terms. Starkly, HB 4624 would not only also require schools to disclose a student’s non-cisgender identity to their guardians, but it would also ban the state’s Medicaid program from covering gender-affirming healthcare for trans people under 26.

Pre-filed on Nov. 16 and officially introduced on Jan. 9, the bill is sponsored by 44 Republican members of the House of Representatives. Like many of its kind, HB 4624 seeks to define sex and gender as equal, based on sex assigned at birth.

Penalties for healthcare professionals who knowingly treat trans and nonbinary minors would be deemed as “unprofessional conduct and shall be subject to discipline by the licensing entity with jurisdiction over the physician, mental health provider, or other medical health care professional,” ultimately giving the professional’s respective licensing board the power to judge.

The bill comes in the wake of South Carolina taking the third placement for worst states to face a high number of anti-trans legislation this year at 31 bills, right behind Oklahoma and Missouri. Last year, the state saw 26 anti-trans bills on the floor.

Additionally, not only are public school officials prohibited from disclosing their trans students’ name or pronoun change to their families, but they are also denounced from personally choosing to withhold such information from the school and the families.

Children have a constitutional right not to have their lives’ intimate facts disclosed without their consent, and those rights are not given up when enrolled in public schools, according to the ACLU. Additionally under federal law, they have rights to keep particular information private and not revealed without their consent, especially if home is not a safe place for LGBTQ youth and schools are their safe place to be themselves at.

During the hearing yesterday, an amendment was proposed to change the prohibition of Medicaid coverage from 26 and under to all ages. The amendment passed. The bill at large passed the committee at a 10-to-6 vote.

Twenty-five states and D.C. include coverage for gender-affirming care under the Medicaid programs, according to a 2022 report by the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute. At the time of the report, approximately 276,000 transgender adults were enrolled in Medicaid.

Independent journalist and tracker of anti-trans legislation Erin Reed took it to X where she claimed the moment to be a “sad day for trans S.C. residents.”

South Carolina-based writer Karly Shorter added onto Reed’s thread, saying, “Senator Cash is a real-world demon spreading hate under the guise of “protecting children” through his (regressive) religious beliefs. He’s *extreme* and extremely awful.”

Last month, during the subcommittee hearing of HB 4624, Kelli R. Parker, director of communications for the South Carolina-based nonprofit for women, girls and their families, Women’s Rights & Empowerment Network (WREN), expressed her disapproval for the bill’s passing in a testimony.

“This cruel legislation is dressed up as a law to protect children, but this is really about government overreach and trying to erase transgender people,” she said. “Restricting access to gender-affirming care jeopardizes the well-being of trans youth and denies their families the freedom to make deeply personal medical decisions.”

HB 4624 will now head to a full Senate floor vote for final passage. Should it pass, it will head to South Carolina’s Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to be signed into law.