A Federal Appeals Court has lifted a district court’s preliminary injunction on laws in Tennessee and Kentucky prohibiting doctors from facilitating child sex changes.
The Ohio-based Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in the 2-1 ruling, “Prohibiting citizens and legislatures from offering their perspectives on high-stakes medical policies, in which compassion for the child points in both directions, is not something life-tenured federal judges should do without a clear warrant in the Constitution.”
Both the Tennessee and Kentucky legislatures passed a law banning medical providers from practicing “gender-affirming care” for minors, which involves prescribing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone therapy, as well as surgical intervention — all of which are irreversible.
Three transgender-identifying minors, their parents, and a doctor brought forth lawsuits against Tennessee officials and filed a request for a preliminary injunction, which was later granted in part by a district court on June 28, 2023.
In Kentucky, seven transgender minors alongside their parents argued that the law violated their constitutional rights, and requested a preliminary injunction against it which was granted on June 28, 2023.
The Federal Appeals Court noted that the plaintiffs and the federal government argue the premise that transgender individuals are a “politically powerless group,” the court, however, denied this presumption. “Whatever may have been true in the past about our society’s treatment of individuals with gender dysphoria … it is difficult to maintain that the democratic process remains broken on this same issue today,” the Court wrote. “The President of the United States and the Department of Justice support the plaintiffs. A national anti-discrimination law, Title VII, protects transgender individuals in the employment setting … The major medical organizations support the plaintiffs … These are not the hallmarks of a skewed or unfair political process …”
In contrast, the district court in Tennessee that partially granted plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction, ruled that the laws banning puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and sex change procedures for minors “improperly discriminates on the basis of sex and that transgender persons constitute a quasi-suspect class.”
To the plaintiffs’ argument that parents have the “right” to determine medical treatments for their children, the court responded, “This country does not have a custom of permitting parents to obtain banned medical treatments for their children and to override contrary legislative policy judgments in the process,” noting that banned medications or procedures have never been made available to minors at the discretion of parents.
Addressing plaintiffs’ claim that parents have the right “to obtain established medical treatments” for their children, “emphasizing the many medical organizations that now support this treatment for adults and minors,” the court wrote that plaintiffs did not meet the “crucial” historical evidence to establish this right.
“Plaintiffs never engage with, or explain how they meet, the ‘crucial’ historical inquiry to establish this right,” the court responded. Because the “concept of gender dysphoria as a medical condition is relatively new and the use of drug treatments that change or modify a child’s sex characteristics is even more recent,” there can be no historical evidence to support the course of treatment.
The number of adolescents undergoing transgender treatments has skyrocketed in recent years, creating a financial incentive for medical providers to support the gender-affirming care model. Some providers have already attested to the fact on video that these procedures are “big money makers,” without addressing their ethical standing.
