The Tennessee Legislature has passed legislation prohibiting children from undergoing transgender sex change procedures.

The Tennessee Legislature finalized a law prohibiting transgender sex change procedures for children on Thursday.

After passing the Tennessee Senate last week, the bill will now be sent to Republican Gov. Bill Lee's desk for signature. Three Democrats joined Republicans in voting 77-16 to pass the bill in the Tennessee House.

Majority leaders Sen. Jack Johnson and Rep. William Lamberth sponsored the bill.

Lee's press secretary, Jade Byers, told CNA that "the governor appreciates Leader Johnson and Leader Lamberth's work to protect children and intends to sign the bill when it reaches his desk."

The bill, once signed into law, will prohibit sex change surgeries, the use of puberty blockers, and hormone therapies on children under the age of 18.

The law also allows the state attorney general to investigate doctors and providers and imposes a $25,000 fine on those who violate the statute.

"A violation of this bill's prohibitions on medical procedures constitutes a potential threat to public health, safety, and welfare and necessitates emergency action by an alleged violator's appropriate regulatory authority," according to the bill.''

Furthermore, the bill allows parents who did not consent to the procedures, as well as their children, to sue providers if they were injured or killed as a result of the transgender treatment they received.

Parents who agreed to sex change procedures may be sued by their children for injuries sustained as a result of the procedures.

"Children do not require these medical procedures to thrive as adults," Lamberth said. "They require mental health care. They require love and support, and many of them require the ability to mature into the individuals that they were born to be."

An exception included in the law allows providers who began sex change procedures before July 1, 2023, to continue those procedures until March 31, 2024.

Rick Musacchio, executive director of the Tennessee Catholic Conference, the Tennessee bishops' public policy voice, told CNA that while the conference did not take a formal position on the bill, it did inform members of the legislature about the Church's teaching on the subject.

"[We] made it clear that Catholic teaching on the human person and the importance of the human body differs significantly from the dominant view in popular culture, which reduces the person to 'will' or desire and treats the body as a thing to be used," Musacchio explained.

Musacchio added that “the permanent effects of the treatments and scarcity of objective study of their long-term outcomes make limits to the treatment of minors appropriate.”

The debate over transgender procedures on children resurfaced in Tennessee after a video surfaced in 2022 of a Vanderbilt University Medical Center official advocating for increased use of such procedures because they are "huge moneymakers."

Matt Walsh, a Catholic Tennessean and popular Daily Wire podcast host, has criticized Vanderbilt University's transgender policy and has been a vocal supporter of the bill prohibiting sex change procedures for children.

"Vanderbilt got into the gender transition game in large part because it is very financially profitable," Walsh said. "They now castrate, sterilize, and mutilate minors as well as adults, while apparently taking steps to hide this activity from the public view. This is what 'health care' has become in modern America."

"The Tennessee Legislature has now passed the bill banning child mutilation in the state," Walsh said of the bill's passage. We're at odds. We're on top. And we're not even halfway through... We were far behind when we began, so we have a lot of ground to make up, but momentum is on our side."

However, not everyone in Tennessee was thrilled with the bill's passage.

"We have taken away a woman's right to determine her health care and her health outcomes, and now we've gone to children. If a doctor and a family believe that taking hormone blockers will be healthy, productive, and lifesaving for these children, that is a decision that should be made," said Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee (ACLU-TN) has vowed to sue the state if the bill is signed into law.

"All Tennesseans should have access to the health care they need to survive and thrive," said ACLU-TN attorney Lucas Cameron-Vaughn on Thursday. "Gender-affirming health care for trans youth is safe, necessary, effective, and often lifesaving. With this dangerous legislation, legislators endanger the health, well-being, and safety of trans young people."

The ACLU-TN also criticized another bill passed by the Tennessee House on the same day that prohibits drag shows from public property and venues where children may be present.