by Olivia Krauth, Queer Kentucky | Kentucky’s Only LGBTQ+ Newsroom March 30, 2026 No, Kentucky is not set to quickly and quietly declare transgender people “mentally ill” this week.  And no, Kentucky’s GOP-dominated legislature is also not about to silently kick trans people out of teachin g in the last seconds of the 2026 legislative session. Y’all, I am once again respectfully begging you to get your Kentucky politics news from reporters here in the Bluegrass State because I fear national and international news outlets have once again gotten things wrong. Like, really wrong.  A Kentucky bill turned last-second floor amendment hoping to label trans people as unfit to teach, bar them from getting or keeping teaching licenses and forcing teachers suspected of being trans to undergo medical examinations to stay in the classroom is not expected to pass as Kentucky winds down its legislative session.  Queer Kentucky knows this due to our knowledge of Kentucky’s legislative process, along with the backing of multiple sources who have been working in and around the bill/amendment.  We’ve been covering LGBTQ+ bills and issues throughout Kentucky’s 2026 legislative session, so let us break down exactly what’s going on and why other outlets are getting it wrong. Brace yourselves: In order to fully and properly explain this, we may need to get a little wonky.  Earlier this month, Sen. Gex Williams — a Republican from Northern Kentucky — filed Senate Bill 351. This bill aimed to keep trans people from being able to get and keep teaching licenses in Kentucky, effectively kicking them out of the classroom.  The bill went nowhere. It didn’t even get a Senate committee assignment, which is the first step in the legislative process. It was not going to pass.  Last week, Williams withdrew the bill, but then quickly refiled the same thing as a floor amendment to a different, previously super uncontroversial bill — House Bill 759. This was basically a last-ditch attempt at getting his bill through.  A floor amendment does not just get automatically added to a bill. When a bill gets brought up for a vote on the House or Senate floor, any proposed floor amendments have to be individually voted on in order to be added to the bill. And then they vote on the bill itself.  HB 759 was on this thing called the consent calendar — basically a batch of unproblematic bills that they lump together and vote on all at once to save time. This is where a lot of the inaccurate reporting went wrong. When a bill on the consent calendar gets a floor amendment, it automatically gets pulled from the consent calendar and gets treated like any other bill. The amendment doesn’t simply just get added to the bill without debate and slipped through (if that’s how this worked, we’d have a lot of issues).  But Williams’ floor amendment also breaks the Senate’s rules around piggybacking. It is literally in their rulebook that you can’t just add a majority or entirety of an unsuccessful bill to a different bill as a floor amendment.  Queer Kentucky has been told that because of this, Williams is expected to withdraw his amendment before the bill gets a vote. And if he doesn’t, the amendment is expected to be struck down because, again, it breaks the rules.  But, past that, if something happens to go awry and the amendment does get through and the Senate does pass it, the bill would then need to go back to the House, where they’d need to agree to the Senate’s changes. But it is so late in the legislative session, and lawmakers have much more pressing issues to take care of over the next two days, it is unlikely they’d agree to the changes because bringing it for a vote would likely spark a lengthy debate over it.  Of course, Queer Kentucky will be keeping a close eye on this situation in the coming days. Lawmakers meet Tuesday and Wednesday before heading home for the veto period — about two weeks where Gov. Andy Beshear gets to go through all of the bills they’ve passed so far and decide what to do with them.  Stay tuned to Queer Kentucky’s website and social media feeds for all things Kentucky politics from folks who actually know what they’re talking about. Other resources to stay informed: Follow Queer Kentucky for up-to-date legislative updates. Check out our civic explainers like: How a Bill Becomes a Law in Kentucky: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Legislative Process. What is a shell bill? And other sneaky ways Kentucky Lawmakers pass legislation. Sign up for legislative alerts for groups like the Fairness Campaign and ACLU of Kentucky. Follow your favorite advocacy groups and journalists on social media for any live updates out of Frankfort. Turn on KET or the LRC’s livestreams of committee meetings and House and Senate proceedings to watch as things go down and listen for any changes to bills. This article first appeared on Queer Kentucky | Kentucky’s Only LGBTQ+ Newsroom and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. The post Fact check: No, Kentucky is not about to quietly kick trans teachers out of the classroom appeared first on The Lexington Times. ...read more read less