Nebraska Bills on Trans Bathroom Bans and Health Care Restrictions Scheduled For Hearings

The bills, if passed, would be a devastating blow to trans-affirming health care for all ages. Plus: an anti-trans bathroom ban on state-run facilities.

Senator Kauth

On Jan. 28 and 29, Nebraska’s unicameral legislature will be hosting public hearings on a slate of anti-trans bills. Here, we’ll break down what the bills are, what they could do, and how you can get involved in the fight to stop them.

LB 730 - An Anti-Trans Bathroom Ban for State-Owned Facilities

“This bill would redefine ‘sex’ in state law using rigid, binary definitions that erase transgender and gender-expansive people, forcing state agencies to ignore their identities,” according to OutNebraska, a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. “It would also ban trans and gender-expansive Nebraskans from using restrooms and locker rooms at state buildings and public schools, increasing discrimination, harassment, and barriers to daily life.”

Other impacted areas would include colleges and universities, highway rest stops, state parks and fairgrounds, and government buildings like the State Capitol.

This bill is among the first to be proposed by Nebraska State Senator Kathleen Kauth during this brief, 60-day legislative session otherwise addressing the state’s $471M budget deficit. She’s also behind the others in the trio.

LB 731 - Chilling Restrictions to Care At All Ages

“This bill aims to restrict gender-affirming care by making it legally and financially risky for doctors to provide it, allowing lawsuits up to 12 years later and framing care around regret and harm,” OutNebraska reports. “This would reduce access to medically necessary care for trans people of all ages by driving providers and insurers away from offering or covering gender-affirming treatment.

In other words, unlike most care, it seems gender-affirming care providers may not even need to commit malpractice to be subject to a lawsuit. Continuing to offer it would be seen as too risky, too costly. Offering it would become too risky.

When used in the past by other states, such legal maneuvers have caused an exodus of providers of gender-affirming care.

Such efforts “aim to make GAC providers ‘uninsurable’ as a backdoor method to reduce access to gender-affirming care for everyone—including adults,” according to a dispatch from Planned Parenthood earlier this year. It’s a page taken straight from the anti-abortion playbook. If you wrap health care in enough red tape, you can functionally shut down providers even without a formal ban on the books.

LB 732 - A Final Blow to Care for Trans Youth (and Some Adults, Too)

This provision would ban providers from prescribing hormone replacement therapy to trans patients under 19 years old, and enables the Attorney General to pursue legal action against medical experts. It carves out an exception, grandfathering in patients who began treatment before Oct. 1, 2023, but requires them to cease providing care before January 1, 2027.

“Instead of trusting doctors and families to make informed decisions, this bill adds more government interference into deeply personal health care choices,” a statement from the progressive group Nebraska Appleseed reads.

Activists are encouraging members of the community to contact their state lawmakers and express opposition, submit an online comment, or attend the hearings and stand against the bills. The hearing schedules can be found on the legislature’s website; these bills will be heard on Jan. 28 and 29. You can also follow along using the legislature’s live stream.

These proposals come on the heels of two state laws targeting the community over the last few years. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen approved Legislative Bill 89 in 2025. He also issued an executive order directing state agencies to enshrine sex assigned at birth as binary and immutable, and signed into law a ban on gender-affirming surgeries for those under 19, both back in 2023.