A ban on gender-transition treatments for minors will take effect on Monday in Missouri after a St. Louis Circuit judge declined a request to temporarily block the measure.
The new law will ban gender-transition surgeries for children and will ban the use of puberty blockers or hormones for minors — though minors who began taking puberty blockers or hormones before the law took effect will be allowed to continue their use.
The legislation also means Medicaid will no longer cover gender-transition treatments for adults and the state will not provide gender-transition surgeries to prisoners.
The ACLU of Missouri, Lambda Legal, and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner filed a legal challenge to the law last month on behalf of doctors, LGBT organizations, and three families of transgender-identifying minors. The plaintiffs argued the law was discriminatory and asked that it be temporarily blocked as the legal case winds through the courts.
St. Louis Circuit judge Steven Ohmer ruled this week that the plaintiffs’ arguments were “unpersuasive and not likely to succeed.”
“The science and medical evidence is conflicting and unclear. Accordingly, the evidence raises more questions than answers,” Ohmer wrote in his ruling. “As a result, it has not clearly been shown with sufficient possibility of success on the merits to justify the grant of a preliminary injunction.”
Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey’s office argued in a court filing that blocking the law “would open the gate to interventions that a growing international consensus has said may be extraordinarily damaging.”
Beginning Monday, medical providers who violate the law can have their licenses revoked and risk being sued by patients. The law gives patients 15 years to sue providers and guarantees patients at least $500,000 in damages if they succeed.