After a federal appeals court upheld Alabama’s limitation on hormone replacement therapy for minors, a judge in Georgia ruled on Tuesday that the state could start enforcing the ban.
In light of the ruling in Alabama, state lawyers requested Judge Sarah Geraghty to lift the preliminary injunction.
Geraghty did not go quite that far, but she did say that it would be impossible to maintain her injunction in light of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision on Alabama’s statute last month. To prepare for the possibility of a rehearing of the Alabama case before a larger panel of judges, she instead imposed a stay, or hold, on her injunction.
According to a statement released by the office of the Georgia attorney general’s spokeswoman Kara Richardson, the state is happy with the verdict and “will continue fighting to protect the health and well-being of Georgia’s children.”
Legal representatives for the plaintiffs in the Georgia case expressed their regret “primarily for the families who are unable to get the care they need in Georgia or make medical decisions based on the best interest of their children” but emphasized that they will continue to fight for their clients in court.
A restriction on the use of puberty blockers and hormones to treat transgender youth was upheld by a panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals last month. A preliminary injunction had been imposed the day before by Geraghty.
Senate Bill 140 in Georgia legalizes the use of hormone treatment for children and teens, including the prescription of drugs to delay puberty. However, it forbids beginning hormone therapy on new patients who are younger than 18. Furthermore, the majority of gender-affirming procedures for transgender minors are prohibited.
The policy started on July 1. On August 20th, Geraghty issued a temporary restraining order against the project. Several parents of transgender children and a community group filed suit to overturn the ban and seek an injunction.
In her judgment issued in August, Geraghty stated that the “imminent risks” posed by the prohibition included sadness, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicidal ideation among the transgender youth who had sought the injunction. She argued that the dangers outweighed the potential damage to the state from an injunction.
To paraphrase the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling on Alabama’s law: “states have a compelling interest in protecting children from drugs.” This is especially true for substances like marijuana, the usage of which has recently spiked, and narcotics like heroin, the effects of which are permanent.
Pediatricians frequently recommend speech therapy or voice training for kids before considering any sort of medical intervention.
Surgery is much less common if puberty has been blocked with hormone therapy. They’ve been around for almost a decade, and they’re considered standard therapy by the American Medical Association and other professional groups representing doctors.
Twenty-two states have passed legislation that either severely limits or outright bans transgender adolescents’ access to gender-affirming medical care. These states have been sued the most.
