Newly minted vice presidential candidate Tim Walz signed a bill in April 2023 that made his state a sanctuary for child sex-changes, promoting tourism for such radical medical interventions in defiance of states that restrict them.
Dubbed the Trans Refuge Bill by supporters, the law grants legal protection to children who travel to Minnesota for so-called gender affirming care, including puberty blockers, reconstructive genital surgery, and hormone therapy, as well as the medical practitioners who provide it.
The law prohibits Minnesota courts or officials from complying with child removal requests, extraditions, arrests, or subpoenas related to a child’s sex-change procedures received in Minnesota, even if they’re a crime in another state.
The law makes seeking gender-transition procedures for minors a factor in some assessments for whether a Minnesota court has jurisdiction to make an initial determination in child-custody cases. It also gives courts temporary emergency jurisdiction if a child comes to Minnesota from a state that refused them the procedures.
Republican lawmaker who criticized the bill argued it undermined parental rights and would lead children down the dangerous slippery slope of experimental, life-altering gender treatments.
Minnesota state representative Leigh Finke, a transgender-identifying man and the sponsor of the bill, said that “Emergency jurisdiction is necessary in this bill because what we are doing, what we are saying is that parents have a right to receive gender-affirming care if they live in South Dakota.”
