Nebraska lawmaker who has transgender child and voted against anti-trans bill faces ethics investigation

A Nebraska state senator who has a transgender child is being investigated for a potential conflict of interest after she voted against a bill that would ban gender-affirming health care for minors.

The complaint, filed Wednesday by Omaha lawyer David Begley, alleges Nebraska Democratic Sen. Megan Hunt could benefit financially from the failure of Legislative Bill 574, a measure that would bar health care providers from administering gender-affirming medical care to transgender patients younger than 19.

Begley, in the complaint filed with the state’s Accountability and Disclosure Commission, wrote that Hunt and her child, who is a minor, “have a slightly more than average chance of obtaining Nebraska Medicaid coverage” for her child’s medical transition if LB 574, otherwise known as the “Let Them Grow Act,” fails to become law.

“If LB 574 does not become law, then Sen. Hunt’s immediate family member could receive a financial benefit, with Medicaid paying for the medical services necessary to transition genders,” Begley wrote in the complaint, a portion of which was read aloud by Hunt during Wednesday’s floor session.

Nebraska is one of nine states where gender-affirming health care for both youths and adults is not included in its Medicaid coverage, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks laws and policies that affect the nation’s LGBTQ community.

“This, colleagues, is not serious. This is harassment,” Hunt said Wednesday on the floor. “This is using the legal system — that we have in our state to stop corruption, to increase transparency to hold governments accountable — and using it to harass a member of the legislature, who you all know is trying to do the right thing.”

In a tweet on Wednesday, Hunt added that several of her colleagues in the state’s unicameral legislature have offered their support in the wake of Begley’s complaint and the subsequent investigation.

“… but I don’t need their words,” Hunt wrote. “I need their votes.”

The investigation into Hunt is the latest in a series of recent punishments doled out to Democratic lawmakers in GOP-held states. 

Also on Wednesday, the Montana House voted to censure Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D), one of the state’s first openly transgender legislators, after she said lawmakers who voted to pass a bill to ban gender-affirming health care for youth would have “blood on your hands.”

Zephyr will be barred from the House floor, anteroom and gallery for the remainder of the session. She has the option to participate remotely, but only by voting. In a statement Wednesday evening, Zephyr called the vote a “disturbing affront to democracy.”

In March, Oklahoma House Republicans voted to censure Democratic state Rep. Mauree Turner, the nation’s first openly nonbinary state legislator. State GOP lawmakers argued that Turner “harbored a fugitive” by allowing an individual who had been protesting at the capitol to use their office following an arrest.

Tennessee’s Republican majority earlier this month expelled two Black Democratic state lawmakers — Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson — after they joined a protest at the capitol calling for stronger gun laws. The demonstration followed a mass shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville that left six people dead, including three 9-year-old students.

Pearson and Jones have since been reinstated. State Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is white and protested alongside Jones and Pearson, was not expelled.