LINCOLN — Legislative committees this week narrowly advanced bills seeking to define group bathrooms in Nebraska schools and state buildings as male or female and fully outlaw gender care treatments for minors.

Neither bill appears to have the 33 votes to overcome vowed opposition during floor debate, including from one key swing senator who describes himself as a “compassionate conservative.”

State Sen. Kathleen Kauth of Omaha has chosen to prioritize her bathroom bill, Legislative Bill 730, but State Sen. Merv Riepe of Ralston reiterated his opposition Wednesday. 

Riepe gave Kauth her 33rd vote last year to restrict K-12 and collegiate sports to students’ sex at birth and define “sex” in state law as binary. But Riepe last year required Kauth to remove language he termed the “Nebraska State Potty Patrol” to earn his support for the bill.

“It’s your priority,” Riepe said Wednesday of Kauth. “It’s not my priority.” 

Each of the state’s 49 senators get a “priority” designation increasing the chances of a selected bill being debated by the full Legislature. Whether a bill gets scheduled is still up to the speaker of the Legislature, John Arch of La Vista.

Safety Of ‘Sex-Segregated Spaces’

Nebraska’s Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee on Wednesday advanced Kauth’s LB 730 in a 5-3 vote. K-12 schools, colleges and state buildings would need to define group bathrooms and locker rooms as “male” or “female,” or designate bathrooms as single occupancy or for use by families.

Kauth has said the bill is about privacy and the safety of “sex-segregated spaces.” She’s said the Legislature must debate hard topics, including her bill she said “deals with facts, not feelings.” 

Omaha Public Schools and Lincoln Public Schools, the state’s largest school districts, opposed LB 730. Kauth said she worries those public statements could risk federal funding for the districts.

“Protecting people who are trans-identified should not translate into putting females in harm’s way,” Kauth said at a Jan. 28 public hearing on her bill, her fourth year advocating for such a bill.

LB 730 would also require executive branch agency rules or regulations to use binary “male” or “female” definitions for any regulations, according to Kauth’s 2025 law. This would include agency data reporting requirements and housing assignments in state correctional facilities.

The sex definitions passed 33-16 last year in Kauth’s LB 89, the “Stand With Women Act.” Lawmakers defined “sex” as whether someone “naturally has, had, will or would have, but for a congenital anomaly or intentional or unintentional disruption, the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports and utilizes” eggs (female) or sperm (male) for fertilization.

If passed, the language in LB 730 would replace an August 2023 executive order from Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen already requiring state agencies under his control to use binary sex definitions.

Gender Care Prohibition Advances

On Tuesday, the Health and Human Services Committee also reported Kauth’s LB 732 out of committee, in a 4-3 vote. It follows up on a 2023 law from Kauth her freshman year that outlawed gender transition surgeries before the age of 19. 

Lawmakers in that same 2023 law charged the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services with regulating access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for youths with gender dysphoria. The regulations, in part, mandated 40 hours of “gender-identity-focused” therapy hours before the medications could be prescribed, in addition to ongoing therapy.

Under the latest proposal, minors with gender dysphoria would not be able to access puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. The bill would explicitly outlaw telehealth for such treatments.

Riepe, a former hospital administrator who supported the health care restrictions in 2023, voted against the advancement of LB 732 in committee, as did State Sen. Dan Quick, a moderate Democrat from Grand Island. No senator chose LB 732 as a “priority” bill by a noon Thursday deadline, likely ending its path for 2026. 

State Sen. John Fredrickson of Omaha, a mental health provider and the third committee member to oppose the bill, filed motions to kill the bill if it’s debated.

On Thursday, Riepe said he supported the 2023 gender care restrictions to add guardrails. But Riepe said he didn’t feel more changes were needed now and that, when possible, government should get out of health care.

The interim executive director of OutNebraska, a statewide advocacy nonprofit for LGBTQ Nebraskans, AT Miller, said Tuesday after LB 732 advanced: “To transgender Nebraskans: You belong here. Your life has value. We see you, we hear you, and we are with you.”

Missing 33rd Vote

Of the bathroom bill, Riepe said he still doesn’t feel the bill is needed. On the topic of locker rooms and a Kauth argument around showers, Riepe said the sports restrictions make locker rooms a “non-issue” that has been addressed.

Riepe said his son is a volunteer coach for a girls’ basketball team. The senator said his son reported that most girls go straight home after practice. One of Riepe’s granddaughters, a high school senior, has also told Riepe that transgender classmates and bathrooms are not top of mind.

“There are people in this chamber who wouldn’t like to have me say that, but it’s guns,” Riepe said.

Kauth on Wednesday also said Riepe is a “hard no” on her bathroom bill, but she said she will continue pursuing votes “until the last second.” If the vote count holds from last year, she would have 31 supporters in addition to herself. 

She said she has not yet talked to Democratic opponents of her sports and sex definitions, in part because “we’ve got so much going on here.”

Among the Democrats who have been swing votes on a few conservative-led measures are Quick and State Sens. Eliot Bostar of Lincoln, Jason Prokop of Lincoln and Victor Rountree of Bellevue.

Bostar said he would vote against LB 730 if scheduled. The other three swing Democrats declined to comment Wednesday on the bathroom bill.

‘Get It Over And Done’

State Sen. Rita Sanders of Bellevue, chair of the Government Committee, said she had heard from Kauth that her bill was ready and that Kauth wanted it to reach the legislative floor. On the policy issue, Sanders said people at the grocery store have asked her about the bill.

“Let’s just get it over and done so we can live with it,” Sanders said. “Let’s look at it. If it comes to the floor, [let’s] have a good debate.”

Arch, who decides scheduling, said he would not ask all senators to show him 33 votes before scheduling “priority” bills. But as debate gets underway, he said he might ask “occasionally” for vote cards. 

Arch declined to comment specifically on whether he would schedule LB 730. If so, he is likely to define it as “controversial and emotionally charged,” allowing an up-or-down vote after four hours instead of eight hours during the first of up to three rounds of debate.

Should Kauth’s bill fall short this year, she has pledged to bring it back. 

Kauth also has a third related bill, LB 731. It would adopt the “Gender Transition Malpractice Accountability Act,” requiring insurance coverage for people wishing to reverse gender transition procedures and allowing civil damages to be sought against medical providers who oversaw earlier procedures. The Judiciary Committee has not decided whether to advance the bill. LB 731 did not get a “priority” designation.

Riepe said he wouldn’t support Kauth’s malpractice and insurance bill if advanced.

Kauth also pointed to her Legislative Resolution 301, which calls for the Judiciary Committee later this year to study whether socially or medically changing behavioral or physical characteristics of a child, in opposition to their sex at birth, constitutes child abuse.

“The tide is turning,” Kauth said.

How Would Enforcement Work?

At the LB 730 hearing, State Sen. John Cavanaugh of Omaha, a committee member and registered Democrat, pressed Kauth on enforcement.

Kauth responded the same as before, saying schools and state agencies already have enforcement mechanisms or policies for general regulations. She has argued most people would follow the law in a “high-trust society” and denied opponents’ claims that her bill would require “genital inspections” or psychiatric evaluations to use the bathroom.

State Sen. Megan Hunt of Omaha, a progressive nonpartisan committee member who has filed motions and led opposition to Kauth’s bill, told Kauth at the hearing that, if passed, Kauth would need to share the restroom with a trans man who might look like they’re part of “Hell’s Angels.”

Some opponents to the bill worried the proposal would affect more than transgender Nebraskans, including women who might not fit “traditional” views of femininity in their looks or mannerisms.

“You like the future where trans men who are gruff, scruff, tough, muscular, bearded, [are] going in the women’s room because maybe they were born with a vagina?” Hunt told Kauth. “And that you like that future because that’s when we tell our kids, ‘Well, that person is trans, but they’re a female-to-man transgender person, so they have to use this restroom with us?”

Kauth told Hunt she was “depending an awful lot on looks, which is part of the problem.” Kauth said looks are subjective and that there needs to be an “objective criteria, which is sex.”

Hunt said the problem is there’s no “objective” test for implementing Kauth’s proposal.

“Do you get that if this law passes, you will be in the bathroom with a big, tough, bearded guy?” Hunt asked at the hearing.

“No, I will be in the bathroom with a big, tough, bearded woman,” Kauth responded. She said later: “I think going based on biology and sex, versus what someone looks like, is much better.”

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2026/02/19/nebraska-bathroom-gender-care-bills-advance-from-committee-lack-votes-to-pass/