Judge Blocks Tennessee Trans Health Care Restrictions
Trump-appointed judge rules that Tennessee's effort to block minors from accessing hormones and puberty blockers may be unconstitutional.
A federal judge has blocked Tennessee’s law barring transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming health care treatments, finding that the measure is likely to be found unconstitutional on its merits.
U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson, of the Middle District of Tennessee, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President Donald Trump, issued a preliminary injunction preventing the state from seeking to enforce its ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy, just days before the measure was set to go into effect on July 1.
In his ruling, issued just hours after a judge in Kentucky issued a similar injunction blocking that state’s ban from taking effect, Richardson found that the plaintiffs, which include three families of transgender youth and a medical doctor who treats transgender patients, were likely to succeed in proving their claim that the law is unconstitutional and should be overturned.
“The Court also acknowledges that it must tread carefully when enjoining from enforcement a law that was enacted through a democratic process. … The legislative process, however, is not without constraints,” Richardson wrote. “If Tennessee wishes to regulate access to certain medical procedures, it must do so in a manner that does not infringe on the rights conferred by the United States Constitution, which is of course supreme to all other laws of the land. With regard to SB1, Tennessee has likely failed to do just this.”
Richardson’s injunction applies to restrictions on hormone treatments and puberty blockers, but does not apply to a prohibition on gender confirmation surgeries, which are already rarely advised for minors.
The law, approved earlier this year by the Republican-dominated legislature, would have blocked doctors from prescribing hormonal treatments for any new patients as soon as the law took effect, and would allow minors who had already begun gender-affirming treatments to be slowly weened off such treatments with the intent of ending all hormone therapies by March 31, 2024.
Under the law, health care providers who recommended or provided hormones or puberty blockers for transgender youth suffering from gender dysphoria could have been fined $25,000 and been subjected to other disciplinary actions, including the potential loss of their license to practice.
At least 20 other states with Republican-controlled legislatures have passed laws restricting gender-affirming care and at least four other states are considering similar bans. However, several courts have blocked such laws from taking effect, finding hat lawmakers may have overstepped their authority.
Earlier this month, a federal judge struck down an Arkansas law prohibiting gender-affirming care as unconstitutional. Similar bans in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, and Indiana have been blocked from taking effect on the grounds that they may be unconstitutional, while the ACLU and ACLU of Oklahoma secured a binding non-enforcement agreement with Oklahoma’s attorney general preventing enforcement of that state’s prohibitions on gender-affirming care.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs praised Richardson’s ruling.
“This is a critical victory for transgender youth, their families, and their medical providers across the state,” Joshua Block, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a statement. “Across the country, we’re seeing a clear and unanimous rejection of these laws as unconstitutional, openly discriminatory, and a danger to the very youth they claim to protect.”
“Today’s ruling acknowledges the dangerous implications of this law and protects the freedom to access vital, life-saving healthcare for trans youth and their families while our challenge proceeds,” Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Tennessee, said in a statement. “This law is an intrusion upon the rights and lives of Tennessee families and threatens the futures of trans youth across the state. We are determined to continue fighting this unconstitutional law until it is struck down for good. And to trans youth and their families: we see you, and we will not stop until all trans Tennesseans have the care and support they need to thrive.”
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