Ohio’s new Republican bill raises a familiar question: Which families count?

Ohio lawmakers are again debating where parental authority ends, and where the state’s responsibility to protect children begins.

House Bill 1013, introduced Sept. 23 by Rep. Johnathan Newman, a Republican, is titled the Family Sovereignty Act. The bill would prohibit courts from awarding custody of a child to a non-parent when the child’s parents deny the child’s gender identity, so long as the parents are married to one another and maintain a family unit.

The bill would prevent an LGBTQ+ youth from being raised by a supportive adult – like a grandparent – even if the youth has been rejected by their parents for being LGBTQ+.

Newman is a conservative Christian and long-time Southern Baptist pastor who is on record saying that he does not believe transgender people exist. 

A current Ohio law allows “any person having knowledge” of a child who appears abused, neglected or dependent to file a sworn complaint in juvenile court. HB 1013 would narrow that avenue explicitly to reports of underage tobacco use, juvenile traffic offenders and unruly children. A different, “mandatory reporting” law requires teachers, health professionals and other designated professionals to report suspected abuse or neglect to children services or law enforcement.

Under HB 1013, reporting authority would not be confined to public children services agencies. Private child-placing agencies would also retain a pathway into these proceedings.

Under Ohio law, a private child-placing agency s are regulated by the state and subject to Ohio placement rules, but they are not county children’s services agencies. This change creates the opportunity for anti-LGBTQ+ institutions to intervene in almost any custody situation. 

That creates an unusual tension within legislation framed around “family sovereignty.” The bill would restrict certain individual’s ability to independently initiate an abuse, neglect or dependency case while giving decision-making authority to both governmental and private child-placement institutions.

Ohio Rep. Karen Brownlee, a Democrat, said HB 1013 would endanger children by outsourcing their protection to private agencies.

“If we truly wanted to keep children safe in Ohio, we would invest in child protection services instead of cutting the services that support our children in favor of giving wealthy Ohioans a tax break,” Brownlee said. “We should never limit those people who are on the ground doing this difficult work to ensure the protection of children.”

Another Ohio bill to protect parents who reject trans youth

For LGBTQ+ Ohioans, HB 1013 arrives alongside another debate over the power of adults and institutions within the child-welfare system.

House Bill 693, the Affirming Families First Act, sponsored by Republican Reps. Gary Click and Josh Williams, would establish that “affirming a minor child’s sex” – defined in their bill as rejecting a child’s trans identity – cannot by itself constitute abuse, neglect or conduct contrary to a child’s best interests. It would also restrict the state from denying or ending foster, adoptive or kinship placements solely on the basis of caregivers rejecting that a child is trans. It would also offer protection to parents who subject their child to the widely discredited practice of conversion therapy.

The bill is straight out of the anti-transgender playbook of The Heritage Foundation, the primary architect behind the anti-LGBTQ+ presidential transition plan Project 2025. At a hearing for HB 693 in March, Laura Bryant Hanford, senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, spoke about “radical ideological training that has so deeply infiltrated child protective systems” and said that the bill will address the “poisonous” practice of affirming trans children. 

RECIRCULATION: https://thebuckeyeflame.com/2026/03/27/hb-693-second-hearing/

Taken together, HB 693 and 1013 put a consequential question before Ohio: When the state limits who can intervene on behalf of a child, who retains that authority, and what safeguards govern the institutions trusted to exercise it?

The Buckeye Flame reached out to Newman for comment on the bill but received no response by the publication date.

HB 1013 has not been assigned to a committee. 🔥

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