Alabama can enforce ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth

Alabama may enforce its felony ban on gender-affirming health care for minors, a federal court ruled Thursday, granting the state’s request to stay a preliminary injunction that had blocked state officials from enforcing the ban for more than a year.

In a two-page order on Thursday, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a lower court’s injunction against the 2022 law, which makes it a felony for physicians to prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to transgender individuals under 19. Those convicted can face up to a decade in prison.

In issuing the 2022 injunction, U.S. District Judge Liles C. Burke wrote that Alabama had produced no credible evidence to show that gender-affirming treatments are “experimental.”

A federal appeals court reversed that decision in August. “The use of these medications in general — let alone for children — almost certainly is not ‘deeply rooted’ in our nation’s history and tradition,” a three-judge panel for the 11th Circuit wrote in its 59-page ruling, citing the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

In November, attorneys for Alabama also requested that the 11th Circuit stay the enforcement of the district court’s preliminary injunction, which the court granted Thursday in a brief unsigned order.

A September request for a rehearing made by the Alabama families challenging the law is still pending, and a full trial on the constitutionality of the ban is slated for August.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall praised Thursday’s decision as “a significant victory for our country, for children, and for common sense.”

In a joint statement, lawyers representing the families challenging the law said the ruling will cause significant harm to children and parents in Alabama.

“Alabama’s transgender healthcare ban will harm thousands of transgender adolescents across the state and will put parents in the excruciating position of not being able to get the medical care their children need to thrive,” according to the statement, issued Thursday by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Human Rights Campaign.

Including Alabama, 23 states have enacted laws or policies that heavily restrict or ban gender-affirming health care for transgender minors. Laws passed in five states — Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Idaho — include provisions that make it a felony crime to provide treatment to trans youth under 18.