Appeals court upholds Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care for minors

Washington Post

11 hours ago

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a 2021 Arkansas law banning gender-affirming care for minors, ruling that parents 'do not have unlimited authority to make medical decisions for their children.'
The St. Louis-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit ruled 8-2 that the Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act does not discriminate against transgender people or violate the rights of medical professionals — rejecting a closely watched challenge to the nation's first-of-its-kind ban on gender transition treatment for transgender youth.
The SAFE Act also prohibits doctors from referring trans youth to other providers for gender-affirming care, which can include puberty blockers and hormone therapy, among other treatments.
Tuesday's ruling follows the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in June, upholding Tennessee's similar ban on gender-affirming care for minors. In the court's majority opinion, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that Tennessee's ban does not discriminate on the basis of sex and that courts must give elected officials wide latitude to pass legislation when there is scientific and policy debate about the safety of such medical treatments. The 8th Circuit cited the Supreme Court's ruling in U.S. v. Skrmetti throughout its majority opinion.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin (R) praised the 8th Circuit's decision Tuesday.
'I applaud the court's decision recognizing that Arkansas has a compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological health of children and am pleased that children in Arkansas will be protected from risky, experimental procedures with lifelong consequences,' Griffin said in a statement.
The American Civil Liberties Association — which brought the original challenge to the 2021 law alongside a doctor who provided gender-affirming care in the state and four transgender youths and their families — slammed the ruling.
'This is a tragically unjust result for transgender Arkansans, their doctors, and their families,' Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, said in a statement Tuesday. 'The state had every opportunity and failed at every turn to prove that this law helps children; in fact, this is a dangerous law that harms children. The law has already had a profound impact on families across Arkansas who all deserve a fundamental right to do what is best for their children.'
Griffin and the state's medical board filed the appeal with the 8th Circuit in July 2023, after U.S. District Judge James Moody of the Eastern District of Arkansas blocked them from enforcing the state's ban on medical treatment for transitioning young people.
Moody had said the ban violated the rights of transgender people and endangered their health: 'Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing.'
The 8th Circuit, sitting en banc, reversed Moody's ruling.
'The minors argue that the Act classifies based on sex in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. They argue that a minor's sex determines whether he or she can receive certain medical treatments,' Judge Duane Benton wrote in the 8th Circuit's majority opinion. 'To the contrary, as the Supreme Court explained about a similar Tennessee law, the Act classifies based only on age and medical procedure.'
'The minors alternatively assert that the Act discriminates based on transgender status,' Benton wrote. 'To the contrary, the Act does not classify based on transgender status. Like the Tennessee law upheld by the Supreme Court, the Act effectively divides minors into two groups. In one group are minors seeking drugs or surgeries for the purposes that the Act prohibits. In the other group are minors seeking drugs or surgeries for purposes the Act does not prohibit.'