Arkansas' ban on gender-affirming care for minors overturned by judge
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The Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock in February 2023. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Arkansas' ban on gender-affirming care for patients under age 18 was struck down by a federal judge on Tuesday.
Driving the news: Arkansas was the first state to prohibit doctors from providing gender-affirming treatments to transgender youth after overriding then- Gov. Asa Hutchinson's veto of the ban in 2021.
- The decision came after a weeks-long trial held in fall 2022.
Details: District Judge Jay Moody, who previously issued a permanent injunction against the ban, said the law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of transgender youth, their parents and their medical providers.
- Moody, who was appointed by former President Obama, said the state failed to prove that its ban was necessary to protect adolescents from treatments that are ineffective or experimental, as it had claimed.
- "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," Moody wrote.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) said Tim Griffin, the state's attorney general, plans to appeal the judge's decision to the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
- "Only in the far-Left’s woke vision of America is it not appropriate to protect children," the governor said on social media.
What they're saying: "I’m so grateful the judge heard my experience of how this health care has changed my life for the better and saw the dangerous impact this law could have on my life and that of countless other transgender people," said Dylan Brandt, a 17-year-old transgender boy from Arkansas who was one of the plaintiffs in the case, in a statement on Tuesday.
- State Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R-Elm Springs), a lead author on the bill, told Axios she hadn't read the judge's opinion, so wouldn't comment but indicated that the legal battle may not be over.
- "I'm sad to hear it," She said. "It's a sad day for Arkansas."
The big picture: Over a dozen states have passed laws that ban or limit gender-affirming care for transgender people, Axios' Oriana González reports.
- Some states, including Kansas, South Carolina and Oklahoma, are considering laws that would ban care for people younger than 21, while Texas has proposed a ban for people under 26.
- However, some courts have also halted the enforcement of such bans in several states.
- Most recently, part of Indiana's ban that was set to go into effect on July 1, was temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
Go deeper: Federal court blocks most of Indiana's gender-affirming care ban
Axios NW Arkansas' Worth Sparkman contributed to this article.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' statement.
