Arizona governor’s executive orders ban conversion therapy, permit transgender health care

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) signed a pair of executive orders Tuesday that strengthened protections for LGBTQ people in the state, banning state support for so-called conversion therapy and requiring that gender-affirming health care for transgender state employees be covered under their insurance plan.

Hobbs’s executive actions will prohibit the use of state funding to promote or facilitate “conversion therapy,” a scientifically discredited practice that seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The practice has been denounced by major medical organizations as harmful and unscientific, in part because it is based on a false belief that LGBTQ identities are pathologies that need to — and can — be cured.

Arizona is the latest in a growing number of states to enact at least a partial ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ minors, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks state-level policies impacting the LGBTQ community. Twenty-one states and Washington, D.C., have passed total bans.

Hobbs on Tuesday additionally expanded access to gender-affirming health care by prohibiting state employee health insurance plans from excluding coverage for gender-affirming surgery, which has been banned in Arizona since 2017.

The health care exclusion was challenged in a 2019 class-action lawsuit filed by Russell Toomey, a transgender professor at the University of Arizona. Attorneys for Toomey said Tuesday they will file a motion to settle the case.

“Today’s executive order by Governor Hobbs provides unexplainable relief and care to the state-sanctioned suffering that I and other transgender Arizonans have endured for several years,” Toomey said Tuesday in a statement. “I see this action as hope that our collective future in Arizona is one that allows trans people, like myself, to live lives full of joy and unrestricted opportunity.”

Notably, Arizona in 2022 became the second state in the nation to restrict access to gender-affirming health care for transgender minors under legislation signed by former GOP Gov. Doug Ducey. Unlike similar bans, however, the Arizona law only applies to surgical procedures, and the administration of puberty blockers and hormone therapy to transgender youths is still legal in the state.

An executive order issued earlier this year by Hobbs includes shield-style protections for gender-affirming care that is legal in Arizona. On Tuesday, Hobbs issued another executive order that barred state agencies from cooperating with civil and criminal cases in states where gender-affirming health care is illegal.

The governor said in a Twitter post Tuesday that Arizona is “leading by example” on LGBTQ rights.

“We will continue working until Arizona is a place where every individual can participate equally in our economy and our workforce without fear of discrimination or exclusion,” Hobbs wrote.