DOJ joins suit over Tenn. law on gender-affirming care

The Department of Justice has filed a motion to join a lawsuit three Tennessee families filed against their state last week alleging a new law banning care for transgender minors is unconstitutional.

In the lawsuit, the families said they saw their children go from depressed to thriving after receiving gender-affirming care — only to face losing access to that treatment now.

The suit was filed April 20 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee by advocacy groups Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as the Washington D.C.-based law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

The parents of Ryan Roe, a transgender 15-year-old, said in the lawsuit the ban on gender-affirming care “will have a serious negative effect on his mental health.”

“He is not sure if he will survive not being able to continue receiving the treatment that allows him to live in a way consistent with his gender,” the lawsuit adds.

The families and the Biden administration are asking the court to block the law from taking effect on July 1, alleging it would violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and gender identity.

“No person should be denied access to necessary medical care just because of their transgender status,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, with the DOJ’s civil rights division, said in a news release. “The right to consider your health and medically-approved treatment options with your family and doctors is a right that everyone should have, including transgender children, who are especially vulnerable to serious risks of depression, anxiety and suicide.”

Republican Gov. Bill Lee, in a tweet, called the motion “federal overreach at its worst.” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a defendant in the lawsuit, said the Biden administration had joined the advocacy groups “in attacking a bipartisan law that protects children from irreversible harm.”

“I welcome the opportunity to litigate these issues and vigorously defend Tennessee’s law,” Skrmetti added.

Senate Bill 1, which was signed into law on March 2, bans several types of gender-affirming care for children, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery to treat minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Treatments such as puberty blockers would still be available for cisgender children. After July 1, minors undergoing treatment will have until March 31 to cycle off the medication.

Proponents of the bill argued that minors aren’t capable of making decisions about gender-affirming care — even though medical experts said those decisions are made with parents and healthcare providers.