Montana's HB 682 Went Into Effect October 1st - What Have Been the Consequences?
This bill provides an extended statute of limitation for harms from gender transition treatments as minors, as well as requires reciprocal insurance coverage for de-transitioning treatment.
A contentious bill during the 2025 Montana legislative session, HB 682 (Rep Kmetz-R, Miles City), was a hard won victory - and a very important one.
The committee hearing rooms were filled with individuals on both sides of the aisle - equally passionate to protect and advocate for a class of people. Those wanting to protect and celebrate “trans rights;” and those wanting be seen for being irreparably harmed by the lies and exploitations of gender medicine.
Montana had already passed a bill during the 2023 session, SB 99, which outright banned gender transition treatment for minors, but a 2025 court ruling permanently struck it down. The brilliance of HB 682 is that the treatment for minors remains legal, but the healthcare providers who are responsible for the harm are held liable for medical malpractice for a greater duration than other medical malpractice cases. In general, Montana statute of limitations for medical malpractice is only two years. This new law, in a sense, serves as a self-governing body for gender providers. Because scrutiny on these patients will be so high, they will self-regulate.
When considering a child, say eleven or twelve years old, who has gender dysphoria and is prescribed puberty blockers to “slow things down so you can figure out what gender you REALLY are,” and don’t worry, “it’s all reversible,” it may take them years to realize they have made a mistake, and even longer to realize that they have, in fact, been harmed by the treatment.
Per the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, puberty blockers can have adverse reactions such as reductions in bone density, sterility, changes in adult height, and potential changes in cognitive functioning. None of these harms will become apparent immediately. And puberty blockers are just the beginning for most who transition — they will likely continue on to cross-sex hormones and possibly mutilating surgeries. That is why the extended statute of limitation (SOL) is critical with HB 682.
This new law will essentially allow a person up to the age of 30 years old to bring a civil action for damages for injuries suffered from gender transition treatment received as a minor. Click here for the exact text. It also requires insurance reciprocity — if the transition treatment was covered by private insurance, Medicaid or Healthy Montana Kids, then the detransition care must be covered as well. This is also huge. During committee testimonies, many detransitioners described nightmare situations where the very providers who prescribed the transition treatment would not, or could not, provide treatment to attempt to undo what had been done.
Per Dr Jared Ross, an emergency room physician in South Carolina and a senior fellow with the Do No Harm nonprofit:
“We don’t routinely take boys and castrate them and inject them full of estrogen, and when they decide this is wrong for them, how do we manage that?” Ross said. “How do we manage a boy who doesn’t have his own testicles anymore? We just don’t have the answers for this.”
Ross said he asked several patients who formerly identified as transgender what their doctors told them when they expressed regret. “When they went to their doctors who took them down this path, they were either convinced, ‘Oh, doubt is a normal part of the process,’ or they were simply dismissed,” he said. (Source)
In the insurance world, every diagnosis and procedure is assigned a code. No code, no coverage, no payment. This law will force medical billing codes to be developed to handle the growing number of individuals wanting to detransition.
So, what have been the implications of HB 682?
In 2025, these Montana clinics have stopped providing “gender-affirming care” for minors:
Community Medical Center (Missoula)
Billings Clinic
Logan Health
Per local reports, the hospitals cite recent legislative and regulatory changes at the state and federal levels as the reason for suspending the care. Earlier this year, the Trump Administration urged hospitals to move towards therapy in place of medical intervention in treating gender dysphoria. Hints at federal funding cuts were made to hospitals that provide gender-related treatments to minors. Per Dr Mehmet Oz, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), “the goal is to protect children from life-altering and experimental procedures.”
Around our state and the entire country, between state legislation, the US Supreme Court (United States v. Skrmetti), and the Trump Administration, more and more protections are being placed to protect children from the ravages of a treatment severely lacking in gold-standard science, but instead, pushed by activist providers and squishy science. We will continue to monitor this.
Praise God!