A state senator in Kentucky has been involved in a series of desperate attempts to get trans people banned from teaching in the state’s schools. With the bulk of this legislative session now over, his efforts have entirely failed.

Originally raising alarm about the plan, the executive director of the Kentucky Psychological Association, Eric Russ, told the Lexington Herald-Leader, “This bill would deter teachers from seeking mental health care, require sworn perjury statements about abandoned diagnoses, and remove qualified educators based on identity rather than conduct.”

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Republican state Sen. Gex Williams first introduced his plan as a bill in its own right, and then tried to sneak it in as an amendment to a bill that had already passed the Kentucky House of Representatives. There are roadblocks in place that will likely prevent Williams’ plan from coming up for a vote at all. Gov. Andy Beshear (D) would likely veto the bill and GOP lawmakers would not have had enough votes to override his veto.

Williams’ original bill, Senate Bill 351, would have prevented trans people from getting teaching licenses in the state and would have revoked the licenses of those who already attained them. That plan relied on characterizing trans identities as disorders using outdated language from the DSM-III-R (which was replaced in 1994 by the DSM-IV), Queer Kentucky reports. The bill would then have withheld teaching licenses from anyone who had been “treated for or diagnosed with any disorder that is excluded from the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.”

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As Queer Kentucky pointed out, Williams’ plans never seemed likely to succeed. The first step for a bill to pass in the Kentucky Senate is for it to receive a committee assignment. Even in Kentucky, a state that has previously passed plenty of anti-LGBTQ+ laws, including re-legalizing conversion therapy last year, Williams’ bill and its misapplication of science failed to pass even that first hurdle.

Undeterred, Williams filed the same language from S.B. 351 as an amendment to H.B. 759, an unrelated bill that had already passed the state house and was on the state senate’s consent calendar: a group of uncontroversial bills that were all expected to pass and voted on together for efficiency.

However, such an amendment would violate the state senate’s “piggybacking” rules, meaning Williams would either have to withdraw the amendment before a vote could take place, or the bill would be voted down solely because the amendment violated the senate’s own rules. Even if the bill passed with the amendment attached, it would then have to go back to the state house for reapproval.

Instead, the Republican-controlled Senate simply removed the bill from the consent calendar and didn’t bother to add it back as a separate bill. They closed for business on Wednesday without having voted on the bill.

There are two more days of the Kentucky legislative session later this month. While H.B. 759 could come up for a vote, even if the amendment made it through all of the roadblocks in place to prevent this sort of behavior, Gov. Beshear would almost certainly veto it.

In a strange turn of events, this makes 2026 the first year in a while that Kentucky has not enacted any anti-LGBTQ+ laws. This is despite state Republican lawmakers introducing bills to allow medical providers to deny care to trans people, a drag ban, and a bathroom ban.

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