WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is allowing Idaho to enforce its ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, while lawsuits over the law continue and lower courts are overturned.
The judge’s order on Monday allows the state to implement a 2023 law that would subject doctors to up to 10 years in prison if they provide hormones, puberty blockers or other gender-affirming care to people under 18. the two transgender teens who filed a lawsuit challenging the law will still be able to receive care.
The court’s three liberal judges are said to have kept the law on hold. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that it would have been better to allow the case to proceed “unhindered by our intervention.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch of the conservative majority wrote that it is “a welcome development” that the court is reining in an overbroad order from a lower court.
A federal judge in Idaho had blocked the law in its entirety after determining it was necessary to protect the teens, who are named in the lawsuits under pseudonyms.
Attorneys for the teens wrote in court filings that the teens’ “gender dysphoria has dramatically reduced as a result of puberty blockers and estrogen therapy.”
Opponents of the law say the teen suicide rate will likely increase. The law’s proponents have said it is necessary to “protect children” from medical or surgical treatments for gender dysphoria, although there is little evidence of gender-affirming surgeries being performed on transgender youth in Idaho.
Gender-affirming care for youth is supported by every major medical organization, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychiatric Association.
Medical professionals define gender dysphoria as serious psychological problems experienced by people whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned at birth.
The action comes as justices will also soon consider whether to impose bans in Kentucky and Tennessee that could be enforced by an appeals court amid legal battles.
At least 23 states have enacted laws limiting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and most of those states are facing lawsuits. A federal judge has declared the Arkansas ban unconstitutional. Montana’s ban has also been temporarily suspended.
The states that have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota , Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.