COURTS SPLIT ON GENDER-AFFIRMING HEALTH CARE BANS
Texas law blocked; Missouri law set to take effect Monday
A Missouri judge ruled Friday that a ban on genderaffirming health care for minors can take effect on Monday, as scheduled, while in Texas a judge blocked the state’s upcoming ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors, the latest in a legal fight over efforts by conservatives to restrict such care around the country.
The Missouri ruling by St. Louis Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer means that beginning next week, health care providers are prohibited from providing genderaffirming surgeries to children. Minors who began puberty blockers or hormones before Monday will be allowed to continue on those medications, but other minors won’t have access to those drugs.
Some adults will also lose access to gender-affirming care. Medicaid no longer will cover treatments for adults, and the state will not provide those surgeries to prisoners.
Physicians who violate the law face having their licenses revoked and being sued by patients. The law makes it easier for former patients to sue, giving them 15 years to go to court and promising at least $500,000 in damages if they succeed.
In Texas, a group of families and doctors sued to block the state law, arguing it would violate parents’ rights and have devastating consequences for transgender children and teens who would be denied treatment recommended by their physicians and parents.
The ruling landed just ahead of the Sept. 1 start date for the ban. The Texas Attorney General’s Office quickly filed an appeal to let the law take effect.
The ACLU of Missouri, Lambda Legal, and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner last month sued to overturn the Missouri law on behalf of doctors, LGBTQ+ organizations, and three families of transgender minors, arguing that it is discriminatory. They asked that the law be temporarily blocked as the court challenge against it plays out. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Sept. 22.
But Ohmer wrote that the plaintiffs’ arguments were “unpersuasive and not likely to succeed.”
More than 20 states have adopted laws to ban some gender-affirming care for minors, although some are not yet in effect or have been put on hold by courts. Many of them prevent transgender minors from accessing hormone therapies, puberty blockers and transition surgeries, even though medical experts say such surgical procedures are rarely performed on children.
In Texas, state District Judge Maria Cantu Hexsel sided with a group of families who argued it would violate parents’ rights and have devastating consequences for transgender children and teenagers who would be denied treatment recommended by their physicians.
Cantu Hexsel, an elected judge who ran as a Democrat, also ruled the state’s ban would discriminate against transgender children and violate doctors’ ability to follow “well-established, evidence-based” medical guidelines under threat of losing their license.
Almost immediately, the state filed an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court, putting the lower ruling on hold for now.