On Monday, a federal circuit court reinstated Alabama’s ban on gender-transition procedures and hormone therapy for children, ruling that a judge’s decision to block the ban was inappropriate.
The case concerned Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act. Section 4(a)(1)–(3) states that “no person shall engage in or cause” the prescription or administration of puberty-blocking medication or cross-sex hormone treatment to a minor “for the purpose of attempting to alter the appearance of or affirm the minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex, if that appearance or perception is inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”
Shortly after the law’s enactment, a group of transgender minors, their parents, and other citizens launched a lawsuit to stop its implementation. The plaintiffs argued the legislation violated the due-process clause and the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment. A district court then blocked the law, pending litigation, holding that there is a constitutional right to “treat [one’s] children with transitioning medications subject to medically accepted standards.”
On Monday, according to the order, Judge Lagoa determined that the district court had abused its discretion in blocking the law because it scrutinized it too severely without establishing authority to support that there is a constitutional liberty to transition a child.
Lagoa described in graphic detail the invasive, often permanent medical interventions that a minor seeking to change his sex may undergo. These operations and prescriptions for this purpose are “unproven” and “poorly studied,” Lagoa said.
They can result in “numerous harmful effects for minors, as well as risks of effects simply unknown due to the new and experimental nature of these interventions,” Lagoa added.
The judge cited a number of the documented negative side effects from transitioning medically.
“Several studies demonstrate that hormonal and surgical interventions often do not resolve the underlying psychological issues affecting the individual,” the order read.
On Monday, Lagoa preserved the law, which criminalizes prescribing or administering puberty-blocking medication to stop or delay normal puberty, supra-physiologic doses of testosterone or other androgens to females, and supra-physiologic doses of estrogen to males. The law also prohibits performing surgeries that sterilize, including castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, orchiectomy, and penectomy.
In April 2022, the U.S. Justice Department filed a complaint against the law on similar grounds to those of the plaintiffs in the Monday case.