This Oregon Bill Would Hide Data About Gender Procedures for Kids

Who says Democrats have learned their lesson about “gender-affirming” treatments for kids?

After the 2024 election, the party was reeling politically from its blind support of subjecting teenagers—even preteens—to a destructive cocktail of hormones and surgeries. But in Oregon, Democrats refuse to come to their senses. They’re considering a bill that would end transparency about gender treatments provided in the state.

Oregon Democrats seem to realize that voters are disturbed by the denial of biological reality and medical attempts to overrule nature. But they’re also in thrall to an activist community, which explains why they’ve made HB4088 one of their top priorities in the legislative session ending on March 8. The bill has already passed the state house and should sail through the state senate in a floor vote this week.

Declaring an “emergency” over “reproductive” and “gender-affirming health care activities,” the bill restricts any Oregon “officer, employee or agent of a public body” from cooperating with federal or out-of-state investigations into so-called gender-affirming treatments provided in the state. It also prevents cooperation with “quasi-law enforcement” agents, refusing to let the state respond to so much as an “inquiry.” This language is so broad that Oregon officials could refuse to respond to federal requests for data from the state’s Medicaid program, which is how the state has funded hundreds of pediatric gender treatments going back years.

It gets worse: the bill would also block requests from private individuals for state information. This would gut Freedom of Information Act requests that concerned citizens have used in recent years to document Oregon’s sordid history of pediatric gender treatments. My colleague Paul Terdal, a consumer-rights advocate from Oregon, found that the state has spent far more money on far more transgender-identifying children than it ever anticipated, and that the state Health Evidence Review Commission buried its own report casting doubt on the efficacy of such treatments. Oregon’s law will make it harder for journalists and researchers like him to hold officials accountable.

HB4088 threatens the public-health research that state data makes possible. In the name of confidentiality, the bill would block the Oregon Health Authority from disclosing any “individually identifiable information” pertaining to so-called gender-affirming treatments—disclosures explicitly allowed under the robust federal medical privacy law, HIPAA. While the release of a patient’s name is always unacceptable, of course, federal law allows the disclosure of more limited data such as dates, diagnoses, procedure codes, and reimbursement amounts so researchers can study a treatment’s effectiveness. Researchers are especially dependent on this kind of data to ensure that treatments and products are improving health outcomes and lives. Such basic medical research will soon no longer be possible in Oregon.

The bill’s language is so sweeping that it would effectively end research in Oregon on everything from prenatal care to the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. Researchers would no longer be able to access the real-world data they need to accelerate drug development and clinical trials.

Some may wonder whether state lawmakers have simply written a bad bill. They certainly have—but not just out of ignorance or confusion. They don’t want taxpayers to know that Oregon is still funding gender treatments for children. They don’t want voters to know that medical professionals are irreversibly damaging the bodies and minds of vulnerable and confused teenagers.

Oregon Democrats did learn a lesson from their party’s national drubbing in 2024—it just wasn’t the right one. They’ve apparently decided that they won’t be punished at the ballot box next time around if they can keep the public in the dark.

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