Arkansas ban on transgender surgery for minors struck down by judge as unconstitutional
Breccan F. Thies
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A federal judge in Arkansas struck down the state’s ban on transgender medical interventions for children Tuesday, deeming the law unconstitutional.
The Arkansas law, which banned doctors from prescribing cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and genital surgeries to children, was the first such ban in the country. Several other states have followed suit.
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District Judge Jay Moody, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, permanently blocked the law after having temporarily done so in 2021.
In his decision for the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Moody said the law violated due process and equal protection, citing Bostock v. Clayton County, where Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch read the Civil Rights Act to include persons identifying as transgender.
“This decision sends a clear message,” ACLU Arkansas Executive Director Holly Dickson said in a press release. “Fear-mongering and misinformation about this health care do not hold up to scrutiny; it hurts trans youth and must end. Science, medicine, and law are clear: gender-affirming care is necessary to ensure these young Arkansans can thrive and be healthy.”
Moody also cited “evidence at trial” showing that the procedures and drugs “improve the health and well-being of many adolescents with gender dysphoria.”
“This is not ‘care’ — it’s activists pushing a political agenda at the expense of our kids and subjecting them to permanent and harmful procedures,” Alexa Henning, a spokeswoman for Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR), told the Washington Examiner. “Only in the far-Left’s woke vision of America is it not appropriate to protect children.”
“We will fight this, and the Attorney General plans to appeal Judge Moody’s decision to the Eighth Circuit,” she concluded.
The medical evidence for Moody’s opinion is controversial in the medical community. While many advocates find the procedures to be necessary, a growing number of medical professionals do not, including medical leadership in the United Kingdom, France, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.
Many European nations have raised the alarm on transitions for children, finding a lack of evidence that it works as a treatment for gender dysphoria, while also citing significant dangers.
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Huckabee Sanders attempted to reinstate the ban after the temporary block from Moody when she took office. The original law was enacted by a veto override from Huckabee Sanders’s predecessor Asa Hutchinson.
Arkansas was the first of at least 20 states to ban such procedures for children.
Julia Johnson contributed to this report.