# Plain Language Summary: Protect Minors from Medical Malpractice Act of 2022

This bill creates a legal right for people to sue doctors who perform gender transition procedures on minors. Specifically, if someone receives puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, or gender-related surgery before age 18, they could sue the doctor who performed the procedure anytime up until 30 years after they turn 18. In these lawsuits, they could seek money damages, punitive damages (extra money meant to punish the doctor), and attorney's fees. The bill applies to any doctor who performs these procedures in situations involving interstate commerce—which is a very broad category that would cover almost any medical practice that uses items, payments, or communications that cross state lines.

The bill also includes two additional provisions. First, it states that no federal law can force a doctor to perform gender transition procedures, protecting doctors who refuse to do so. Second, it would cut off all federal funding from the Department of Health and Human Services to any state that requires doctors to perform gender transition procedures. In practice, this second provision is unlikely to have much effect since no states currently require doctors to perform these procedures.

The bill does include some exceptions. It doesn't apply to treatments for people born with intersex conditions (where sex characteristics are ambiguous), treatment for infections or injuries caused by previous procedures, or emergency procedures needed to prevent death or serious harm. The bill's practical impact would depend on how courts interpret what counts as a "gender transition procedure" and whether the broad interstate commerce language actually gives federal courts jurisdiction over these cases, since healthcare is traditionally regulated by states.

Protect Minors from Medical Malpractice Act of 2022

Banks, Jim

Protect Minors from Medical Malpractice Act of 2022 This bill makes a medical practitioner who performs a gender-transition procedure on an individual who is less than 18 years of age liable for any physical, psychological, emotional, or physiological harms from the procedure for 30 years after the individual turns 18. Additionally, if a state requires medical practitioners to perform gender-transition procedures, that state shall be ineligible for federal funding from the Department of Health and Human Services. Gender-transition procedures generally include certain surgeries or hormone therapies that change the body of an individual to correspond to a sex that is discordant with the individual's biological sex. They exclude, however, interventions to treat (1) individuals who either have ambiguous external biological sex characteristics or lack a normal sex chromosome structure, sex steroid hormone production, or sex steroid hormone action; (2) infections, injuries, diseases, or disorders caused by a gender-transition procedure; or (3) a physical disorder, injury, or illness that places an individual in imminent danger of death or impairment of a major bodily function.