The Senate Conservative Leadership Caucus was a short-lived nonprofit organization founded by three Wyoming state senators. Its purpose: to pay at least one out-of-state resident to visit Cheyenne and give favorable public testimony on a bill those senators wanted to pass. The bill was a ban on gender-affirming care for minors and the testifier was one of a handful of individuals who travel the country fighting for such bans in state after state. To this day, it’s unknown how much money changed hands.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Jeff Victor has been reporting on the caucus. He shared his findings with News Director Kamila Kudleska.
Editor's Note: This story has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Kamila Kudelska: Jeff, how did this group get on your radar?
Jeff Victor: We have to go back to the winter of 2023. The Senate committee for Labor, Health and Social Services was working on a bill nicknamed “Chloe’s Law,” which was meant to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Basically, the bill said that if you were a doctor or another medical professional and you prescribed hormone blockers or hormone therapy or you performed gender-affirming surgery for anyone under the age of 18, the state could take away your medical license.
KK: To be clear, these committee meetings are where lawmakers take a closer look at the bill in question and get feedback from members of the public.
JV: Correct, it’s the main opportunity the public has to offer their input during the session. There was one testifier that day who really stood out. Her name was Luka Hein.
KK: Why did she stand out? What was special about her testimony?
JV: Hein is a young woman from Nebraska who received a double mastectomy at the age of 16. Hein says that she and her parents were basically coerced into consenting to that surgery.
Archival audio of Luka Hein testifying before lawmakers: There was nothing wrong with my body. I was just a teenager that was uncomfortable. And instead I was pushed down a path that taught me that growing up was a disease that needed to be cured with surgery and medicine.
JV: Hein says she was made to believe that she was a trans boy and pushed into a surgery that she now regrets.
It’s important to note that it’s extremely rare for someone at that age to undergo such a major surgery. Medical professionals have told Wyoming lawmakers, in this and other meetings, that these kinds of surgeries are not considered acceptable for transgender youth and they never happen in Wyoming. Hormone blockers and hormone therapy do take place before the age of 18, but when it comes to surgery, that is reserved for adulthood.
KK: Okay, got it.
JV: Hein’s story is an outlier in other ways too. A 2021 meta-analysis of 27 studies found that regret following a surgical transition is exceptionally rare. We’re talking less than one percent. People who can access gender-affirming care report a higher overall well-being and find it easier to form meaningful relationships with other people. They’re less depressed and they’re less likely to think about or attempt suicide. The rate of regret for these gender-affirming surgeries is much lower than for other major medical interventions. Some research has even found you are actually more likely to regret having a child than undergoing a surgical gender transition. We often hear claims that this regret is common. It is not very common, despite what Hein’s testimony might suggest.
KK: So wait, why was a Nebraska resident testifying at a Wyoming legislative hearing?
JV: She was paid to be there.
KK: How do you know that?
JV: Shortly after Hein’s testimony, lawmakers heard from another commenter, Marci Shaver, the Wyoming state director for American Atheists. She was there to oppose the bill but Shaver also asked about Hein being there.
Archival audio of Marci Shaver testifying before lawmakers: I would like to know who is financing the young woman who's touring the country, giving testimony at various legislatures.
JV: Hein has testified before several state legislatures, including in Missouri and in her home state of Nebraska. There’s a small handful of de-transitioners who tour the country testifying to state legislatures in favor of bills banning gender-affirming care for minors. That handful includes the woman from California for whom Chloe’s Law was named. They’re often paid by advocacy groups to testify, and it can be lucrative.
KK: Did Hein or any lawmakers respond to Shaver’s question about Hein being paid?
JV: No, but that’s not really how public comment periods work. However, at the end of the meeting, Sen. [Anthony] Bouchard (R-Cheyenne) addressed Shaver’s comment.
Archival audio of Anthony Bouchard: There was a question by someone about who financed the travel. And I just — it's going to come out.
JV: Bouchard said Shaver had attacked him a lot on social media.
Archival audio of Anthony Bouchard continued: Sen. [Dan] Laursen [R-Powell], Sen. [Troy] McKeown [R-Gillette], and myself, we formed an outside entity called the Senate Conservative Leadership Caucus. We raised money and … we want to continue to help make sure there's testimony to make sure this bill advances.
JV: I had never heard of lawmakers doing this to pay for testimony and I couldn’t find anything about this happening before, in Wyoming or anywhere else, although that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened elsewhere.
But because it’s a nonprofit, I wanted to check out its tax filings.
Even though they don’t pay taxes, nonprofits do typically have to file some documents in lieu of taxes that tell us how much money they’ve raised and spent, who’s on their board of directors and how much their executive director is paid. Smaller nonprofits can sometimes report even less, but they still report some of that. So I waited for those filings to be released.
KK: What did they show?
JV: As it turns out, the senators’ nonprofit is exempt from filing any kind of tax documents. Some nonprofits, like churches, are exempt from this public disclosure requirement. The IRS also exempts a “caucus or association of state or local officials.” So there is no filing for the Senate Conservative Leadership Caucus because it’s not required to file that paperwork.
KK: What does that mean for your investigation?
JV: It means we will only get that information if Sen. Bouchard and the others volunteer it. I’ve called and emailed all of them and gotten no response. I also reached out to Luka Hein but she didn’t respond either.
KK: Does paying someone to testify to the Legislature break any Senate rules about conduct or transparency?
JV: That was something I was curious about, so I called Sen. Chris Rothfuss, the minority leader in the Senate who’s been there for more than a decade.
Chris Rothfuss: There aren't any rules or requirements for what is allowable, bringing in outside experts or advocates or interest groups, either for or against legislation.
JV: That’s according to the official rules of the Wyoming Senate. Rothfuss added that politicians are always trying to come up with clever or creative ways of exploiting loopholes to make their bills or special projects successful. That’s just politics. But forming a nonprofit to pay for testimony was a new one.
Chris Rothfuss: I haven't seen, to my knowledge, legislators forming an entity for the purpose of recruiting lobbyists or advocates or interested parties.
KK: I just heard Sen. Rothfuss mention lobbyists. That made me wonder: Isn’t this just lobbying? Was this person, who was paid to testify, just acting as a lobbyist?
JV: Hein did not register as a lobbyist. She does not appear in the publicly accessible list of Wyoming lobbyists for 2023, or for either of the surrounding years.
In Wyoming, a lobbyist is defined as anyone trying to influence legislation “on behalf” of some organization. All lobbyists are required to register with the Secretary of State’s Office if they’re getting paid. It doesn’t matter how much they’re paid or if those payments are simply expense reimbursements.
Not registering as a lobbyist, when you’re working as a lobbyist, would be a misdemeanor crime in Wyoming, punishable by a fine. I reached out to the Secretary of State’s Office to ask if Hein should have registered as a lobbyist and received no reply.
KK: So still, we don’t know how much money was raised and spent for her testimony. Where does all this stand now?
JV: Chloe’s Law ultimately failed. But Bouchard brought a very similar bill back in 2024 and that one did pass the Legislature and got signed into law. It went into effect last month. As for the Senate Conservative Leadership Caucus, the Secretary of State’s business center site shows it was administratively dissolved in March.
