Bills On Child Sex Changes, Internet Porn Face Wyoming Lawmakers

The 2024 session of the Wyoming Legislature is now less than a week away.

Lawmakers are scheduled to convene in a budget session in Cheyenne on Monday, February 12.

As of Tuesday morning, Feb. 6 a total of 190 bills plus four joint resolutions had been filed for the session. Since the deadline for filing bills with the Legislative Service Office [Feb. 14] is still more than a week away, that list is likely to grow considerably.

Since this is a budget session, non-budget items will need a 2/3 majority vote for introduction. Even so, there has been a trend over the last several years of non-budget items being filed for budget sessions.

There are already a large number of non-budget bills that have been put forward for the upcoming session.

They include the following:

House Bill 50: the ''What is a Woman" act. Requires separate accommodations, including restrooms, for males and females.

Sex would be defined as follows under the bill

"Female" means a person whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova and/or who exhibits XX chromosomes and does not exhibit a Y chromosome;

"Male" means a person whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female and/or who exhibits XY chromosomes or exhibits a Y chromosome;''

It would apply to ''athletics, prisons or other detention facilities, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, restrooms and other areas where safety or privacy are implicated and that result in separate accommodations."

The bill's primary sponsor is Rep. Jeanette Ward [R-Natrona County]. It is co-sponsored by Representative(s) Allemand, Angelos, Bear, Haroldson, Hornok, Jennings, Locke, Neiman, Ottman, Pendergraft, Penn, Rodriguez-Williams, Slagle, Smith, Strock
Senator(s) French, Ide, Steinmetz.

House Bill 63: Would prohibit sex-change procedures for minors, with some medical exemptions. The Bill's primary sponsor is Rep, Lloyd Larsen [R-Fremont County]. Co-sponsors include Representative(s) Stith, Senator(s) Baldwin, Dockstader, Schuler.

House Bill 78: Would provide penalties for online depictions of "sexual content in a patently offensive way" and specifically of rape or sexual abuse. It would provide for fines of up to $1000 per day as well as a year in jail. If the material is accessible to children, it would add fines of up to $6,000 per day if the material is seen by a minor as well as the other penalties.

It would also require age verification for websites where more than 1/3 of the content is "harmful to minors." Such content would include nudity or sex under specified criteria.

Sponsored by Rep. Sarah Penn [R-Fremont County]. Co-sponsored by Representative(s) Angelos, Haroldson, Hornok, Knapp, Neiman, Rodriguez-Williams, Strock, Styvar, Trujillo, Ward, and Senator(s) Hutchings, Laursen, D.

A long list of other budget and non-budget bills have also been filed for the upcoming session.

You can see all of the bills that have been filed for the session so far here.