Landmark Federal Ruling Invalidates Arkansas Law Prohibiting Minors from Gender Transitioning Treatments: A First-of-its-Kind Decision in the Battle for Transgender Rights

2023-06-21 16:43:40

A federal judge invalidated on Tuesday an Arkansas law prohibiting minors from gender transitioning treatments. It is a first-of-its-kind ruling in a country where a total of 19 Republican-run states are trying to bar minors from accessing hormonal or surgical gender transition treatments.

In an 80-page decision, Judge James Mood found that Arkansas law both discriminates against transgender people and violates doctors’ constitutional rights. He also argued that this conservative state had failed to substantiate a number of its claims, including that the care was experimental or carelessly prescribed to teenagers.

“Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, evidence has shown that prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that by prohibiting it, the state undermines the interests that he claims to defend,” wrote Justice James Moody, who was nominated by Barack Obama and largely confirmed by the Senate. “Furthermore, the various assertions that underlie the state’s arguments that the law protects children and safeguards medical ethics do not explain why only gender-affirming medical care – and all gender-affirming medical care gender – are covered by the ban. »

In Florida and Alabama, federal judges recently blocked enforcement of laws barring minors from gender transitioning treatment. In his decision, the Florida federal judge took a scathing look at local elected officials by concluding that the plaintiffs – families – had “every chance of prevailing” in their argument on the unconstitutionality of the law and that “periods were an exercise in politics, not good medicine.”

But the federal judge in Arkansas, who had already blocked the disputed law in 2021, is the first to declare such a measure unconstitutional. Republican Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has confirmed that the state will appeal the decision. “This isn’t about ‘care’, it’s about activists pushing a political agenda at the expense of our children,” she said in a statement.

This debate will surely end up one day before the Supreme Court of the United States.

(Photo AP)