25 states file legal brief defending Trump ban on youth sex change procedures

American Press

a day ago

On Monday, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill joined 24 other Republican attorneys general in backing President Donald Trump's executive order aimed at halting federal funding for sex change procedures on minors, marking the state's latest push in a broader legal fight over transgender care.
Three days earlier, Massachusetts filed a brief joined by 19 states challenging the same executive order. The states argue the order is unconstitutional, discriminatory, and violates the Spending Clause by tying federal health funds to ideological conditions.
The Massachusetts-led brief contends that the order jeopardizes care for transgender youth, strips states of medical decision-making authority, and undermines long-standing Medicaid protections. The suit seeks a declaratory judgment and permanent injunction against implementation.
The attorneys general defending the Trump order, led by Alabama's Steve Marshall, filed amicus briefs in the 4th and 9th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals, supporting Trump's order and urging the courts to overturn preliminary injunctions issued earlier this year in lawsuits out of Washington and Maryland.
The Alabama-led briefs argue that continuing to fund such procedures violates both medical ethics and constitutional principles.
'Even though President Trump is in office, common sense and constitutional principles are under constant assault by radical leftist groups like the ACLU,' said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, who is leading the coalition.
Marshall accused the ACLU of pushing courts to 'force taxpayers to fund sex-change procedures on children.'
Murrill, who has been an outspoken critic of so-called 'gender-affirming' care for minors, did not release a separate public statement, but her participation in the brief underscores Louisiana's alignment with a growing number of Republican-led states that seek to limit access to such treatments.
In recent years, Louisiana's Legislature has passed bans on puberty blockers and hormone treatments for minors.
According to the coalition's legal filings, the brief draws on findings from Alabama's discovery in a now-dismissed challenge to its own ban on 'gender-affirming' care, where Marshall's office claimed to uncover a coordinated effort to remove age restrictions from national medical guidelines — a move he described as politically motivated rather than science-based.
The Alabama-led team argues that federal funding for 'gender-affirming' care is based on 'discredited standards' and that such medical interventions for minors have irreversible consequences.
'The evidence says otherwise,' Marshall said. 'These harmful interventions have lasting consequences for vulnerable children.'
The Alabama-led brief was filed in both the 9th Circuit and 4th Circuit federal courts of appeal.
Louisiana was joined by attorneys general from Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming in addition to Louisiana.
The filings are part of a broader conservative legal strategy seeking to bolster state laws banning so-called 'gender-affirming' care while reinforcing Trump-era federal policy that frames such care as medically unnecessary and ideologically driven.