LGBTQ issues have strong voice in Nevada Legislature with newly formed caucus

By Casey Harrison (contact)

Wednesday, March 8, 2023 | 2 a.m.

If attendance at the initial meeting of a new legislative caucus is any indication, Nevada’s LGBTQ residents will have plenty of lawmakers looking after their interests in this year’s Nevada Legislature.

Nearly 20 Nevada lawmakers attended the meeting last month of the newly formed LGBTQ+ caucus. The group’s main purpose is to advocate for protecting rights and advancing equality through legislation, meaning the strong showing was a positive sign, said state Sen. Dallas Harris, D-Las Vegas.

“That’s a good almost one-third of this legislative body,” said Harris, the caucus’ founder and leader, who is openly gay. “So, I’m happy to see lots of engagement and lots of interest in ensuring that LGBTQ+ Nevadans across the state feel welcome here and continue to feel welcome here.”

In an email last month announcing formation of the caucus, Democratic Assemblywoman Sarah Peters and Harris said priorities for this legislative session will build off progress made in the last biennium and push forward on other key issues.

Legislation passed in 2021 modernized the way HIV can be criminalized. Legislators in 2021 also repealed a law that made it a category B felony for an HIV-positive person to “knowingly or willfully” transmit the disease.

Already this session, Harris and co-sponsoring state Sens. Melanie Scheible, D-Las Vegas, and Pat Spearman, D-North Las Vegas, reintroduced a bill that stalled during the 2021 session that would require health insurers in Nevada to cover gender-affirming care.

Harris said the caucus, which has drawn the interest of Republican lawmakers but at this time is made up solely of Democrats, was targeting bills ranging from continued reforms to the way HIV transmission can sometimes be criminally penalized to a bill that would address housing and security for transgender inmates serving time at a Nevada Department of Corrections facility.

The Sun caught up with Harris at the Statehouse to talk about the caucus and issues affecting the LGBTQ community in Nevada. Here are highlights of the conversation:

This is the first year the Nevada Legislature has had a caucus on LGBTQ affairs. What can be accomplished, legislatively, in this session? And why is it important for that community to have a group focused on LGBT-specific issues?

I’ll start with the last question first. If you take a look at some of the pieces of legislation that are being pushed across the country, that gives you some kind of indication as to why it’s really important that folks who identify as LGBTQ+, plus allies, come together to ensure that that type of thing does not happen here in Nevada. Nevada is actually a very, very friendly state compared to the rest of the country. And our job, I think, is to ensure that it stays that way and everyone does better together. So, we’re coming together, and we’re going to hold the line on some of these really, really important issues.”

When you say legislative action being taken elsewhere across the country, are you talking about bans on gender-affirming care for transgender people? Or preventing trans youths from participating in certain athletic competitions? Are those the types of laws you think shouldn’t be coming here?

It’s the whole gamut. I wish it was just that, or just one or two attacks. But it’s those types of pieces of legislation, it’s things like “Don’t Say Gay” in Florida. You know, Nikki Haley coming out saying that bill doesn’t go far enough, as she runs to potentially be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. These types of attacks are just running the gamut up and down the spectrum. There’s been a sort of resurgence in some of these anti-LGBTQ+ attacks across the country, unfortunately — in various forms.

One of the bills being considered is Senate Bill 163, which would compel health insurers, including Medicaid, to cover the treatments of conditions like gender dysphoria and other disorders of sexual development. Explain to readers why that is important.

So that’s Sen. Scheible’s bill, I believe, to make sure insurance companies provide gender-affirming care for children. You know, our insurance system is really complicated. And there are quite a few reforms that need to be made to our system as a whole. But one thing we can do, as legislators in this state, is to make sure that the children who need this are treated as if they need it. That it’s not some passing fad.

This isn’t some arbitrary thing that kids are doing because it’s hip or cool. This is classic health care that needs to be treated as such. And so sometimes you need to let folks know, “Hey, this is care that we want to be covered because it should be covered.”

If companies were doing this on their own, there wouldn’t be a need for this legislation, but in my opinion, this is squarely within the type of health care that people need, and we should be delivering and insurance companies should be covering.

What other bills have you been working on this session? Have you gotten any feedback on those?

Yeah, I’m hearing lots of feedback, not all of it positive. But that is the nature of the job. Specifically, with SB172, there are parents who are not actually worried about their children having access to preventive care but are worried about their children engaging in behavior that would need that preventive care. And sometimes those two issues get conflated. You don’t want your 12-year-old engaging in sex. But if they are, it’s important that we ensure that they have access to the things that they need to keep them as safe as possible.

We already — and I don’t know if most folks know this ­— allow children to consent to treatment for STDs. Why not also allow them to consent to preventive services so they don’t need the treatment in the first place? This is specifically a public health measure that is being tied into a parental rights question. That’s the wrong question. But from public health professionals, this is clearly the road that we need to be going down, specifically talking about 172.

Another bill I’m working on is a hate crimes gun prevention bill, which would remove guns from folks who have been convicted of hate crimes that are gross misdemeanors. We already do it for felonies. We’ve done it for domestic violence. This would now add what I think is a small current loophole in the system to ensure we’re catching folks who have been convicted of hate crimes also.

In addition to chairing the LGBTQ+ caucus, you’re also chief majority whip as well as the chair of the Senate Committee on Growth and Infrastructure, and the vice chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Did you ever envision this?

Not at all, no. I really didn’t know what to expect. If you haven’t been in it, then you probably have no idea. And I was aware of that at the time, and that anything I kind of guessed about what it would be like was going to be wrong. And because I was appointed, it all happened for me fairly quickly. It came really fast and furious at the beginning, but then you kind of get your sea legs under you and decide what you want to do with what you’ve got, once you figure out what that looks like. And, so, I started to make a concerted effort to focus on certain issues, and kind of learn how the building works.