As you’ll probably remember, HB 648 is the bill banning pediatric sex-changes and chemical castration of children via “puberty blocker” drugs, which passed with a bipartisan supermajority in the Louisiana House but was killed – temporarily, as it turned out, when public transvestite and fraudulent RINO state senator Fred Mills joined with the Democrats in the Senate Health and Welfare Committee that he chairs in voting it down.

That set off a pretty intense storm of outrage among Louisiana’s voting public, and Mills didn’t help himself by taking a defiant stance and claiming those opposed to his position were out of touch. A ban on trans surgeries enjoys majority support among Louisiana voters, and by more than 3 to 1 Republican voters in Louisiana favor bills like HB 648.

Which is why you got what happened in the Louisiana Senate yesterday…

Amid mounting pressure from Republicans, a bill banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths in Louisiana that was narrowly killed by a legislative committee last week has been resurrected.

In a rare occurrence, the Senate voted to recommit the controversial bill to a different committee, giving it a second chance at life. The measure, which was rejected by the Senate Health & Welfare Committee last week, received statewide and national attention after a Republican cast the tie-breaking vote to kill the bill.

Sen. Fred Mills, the Republican chairman of the Health & Welfare Committee who cast last week’s decisive vote, told his colleagues on the chamber floor Thursday that he opposed reviving the bill, adding that if lawmakers respect the vote of the majority of the committee, they will uphold the decision. But the Senate voted 26-11 — along party lines, with the exception of Mills – to recommit the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is scheduled to meet Friday afternoon.

The bill has already passed in the House. If the Senate Judiciary Committee advances the bill, it will then move to the full Senate for debate. Upon final passage, the measure would be sent to the desk of Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who opposes the bill. Edwards has not said whether he would veto it.

“Do what you need to do,” Mills told lawmakers Thursday. “We can talk about the merits of the bill for a long period of time, and I know people are saying that they want (the bill) to be heard on the floor. I do understand that. But I will tell you that this committee did a heck of a job.”

So it’s a good step, and the fact that 26 Republican Senators – everybody in the delegation except Mills, who is now officially the worst Republican in the Senate – opted to publicly repudiate him is a sign that he’s officially finished in politics.

Which he was anyway, seeing as though he’s term-limited.

Kudos particularly go to Stewart Cathey, the senator from Monroe who brought the motion to reconsider on the bill. There were lots of people saying they were for discharging HB 648 to the floor, but for several days it was peculiar that nobody would step forward to make the motion. Cathey did, which is something of a redemption for his vote – along with everybody else in the Senate – to bust the state spending caps and fritter away $2.2 billion in surplus money on the legislative equivalent of hookers and blow.

That said, we’re less than a week away from the end of the legislative session and the bill still has to go through a committee vote before it can even get to the floor. And Senate Judiciary A, the committee it’s heading to this afternoon, is not much better than Health and Welfare. Jud A earlier this week killed another bill enjoying vast popular support, a measure by Rep. Valerie Hodges that would ban ownership by foreign nationals from countries designated as “adversaries” (read: China) of land in the state, because its chairman Barrow Peacock held a vote on the bill while Republican Sen. Heather Cloud was tied up in an appropriations meeting and it failed on a 3-3 vote.

There is no reason not to worry the same thing will happen to HB 648, and the three Jud A Democrats – Jay “Lunatic” Luneau, Cleo Fields and Jimmy Harris – aren’t the types who cross party lines for much of anything.

If we had to bet, we’d say this bill is going to be left on the vine as the session concludes. But yesterday’s vote on the motion to recommit is nevertheless one which can go on the record. And the bill will without a doubt pass into law next year, when there is a better governor and a better legislature to handle it.