Federal Court Strikes Down Anti-Transgender Arkansas Law

The mantra of racist and anti-LGBT legislators as they seek to ban books and erase history they don't like and LGBT students in general is that they are protecting "parental rights."  However, the real agenda is to please knuckle dragging evangelicals and Christofascists who want to sanitize history of the rampant racism that defined the Jim Crow era and want to send LGBT individuals back into the shadows because we challenge their mythical story line on marriage between one man and one woman - polygamy was the actual norm of the Old Testament - and their at 12th century of human sexuality which ultimately traces back to the writings of Bronze Age herders. Thus, the rights of parents who do not subscribe to such ignorance and bigotry simply do not matter nor does legitimate medical and scientific knowledge.   The result has been the hundreds of anti-LGBT laws passed by Republican controlled legislatures, including bans on transgender care in backwaters like Arkansas and states like Florida and Texas.  Now, a federal court has struck down Arkansas' ban on care for transgender youth which noted in part the untruths pushed by supporters of the ban (as always, if evangelicals' and Christofascists'lips are moving the safest bet is to assume they are lying).  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the welcomed ruling.  Here are highlights:

A federal judge has struck down a 2021 Arkansas law banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth, forbidding the enforcement of the nation’s first law blocking medical treatment for transitioning young people.

U.S. District Judge James Moody of the Eastern District of Arkansas ruled the law unconstitutional Tuesday, saying it violated the rights of doctors and discriminated against transgender people. Gender-affirming medical care includes such treatments as puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The law also prohibited doctors from referring trans youth to other providers for gender-affirming care.

Moody’s closely watched ruling marks the first time a federal court has decided the legality of such bans, which have been taken up by a growing number of state legislatures in recent years. As of June 20, at least 20 additional states had enacted restrictions or bans on gender-affirming care

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a statement posted on Twitter that, in the ruling, “Judge Moody misses what is widely known: There is no scientific evidence that any child will benefit from these procedures, while the consequences are harmful and often permanent. We will appeal to the Eighth Circuit.”

A few medical organizations have raised concerns about gender-affirming care, but leading medical associations, including the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society, all recommend that transgender youth be able to access this kind of health care.

For now, the ruling affects only Arkansas. But its impact is expected to extend further, particularly once it is appealed, said Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas.

This is the first federal court ruling on a categorical ban on gender-affirming care and follows rulings in Florida, Alabama and Indiana blocking enforcement of those bans while challenges against them proceed.

Moody already had temporarily blocked the law from taking effect. In his decision Tuesday, he wrote: “Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing.”

Before 2020, not a single state had introduced legislation to ban gender-affirming care, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonpartisan think tank that tracks LGBTQ+ policy. When Arkansas passed its ban in 2021, it was considered the strictest anti-trans law in the country. . . . . It was originally vetoed by then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R), who called it “vast government overreach.” A Republican supermajority in the state legislature then overrode his veto.

But these bans, as well as other restrictions on transition care, have gained steam since. Two states, Arizona and Alabama, passed similar bans last year. In the first six months of 2023, roughly 34 states have introduced more than 100 different gender-affirming care restrictions in their legislatures, according to the ACLU.

These bills note that these procedures remain legal — including genital surgeries and breast augmentation for minors — as long as they are not used to treat gender dysphoria. In its challenge to the Arkansas ban, the ACLU argued that this selective prohibition was discriminatory.

In response to increasing efforts to make such care illegal, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement in August 2022 pushing back against “rampant disinformation” fueled by extremists.

“There is strong consensus among the most prominent medical organizations worldwide that evidence-based, gender-affirming care for transgender children and adolescents is medically necessary and appropriate. It can even be lifesaving,” wrote the group’s president. “Pediatricians will not stay silent as these lies are waged against our patients and peers.”

The plaintiffs in the Arkansas lawsuit include a doctor who provided gender-affirming care in the state, as well as four transgender youths and their families. Dylan Brandt, 17, and his mother Joanna Brandt of Greenwood, Ark., were among them.

The Brandts joined the ACLU lawsuit in part because they did not feel the same pressures that other families did to lie low, said Joanna Brandt. She owns her own business, and she “chose to believe” her participation in the legal challenge would not affect it. But, “if for some reason it did, it was still a worthwhile cause,” she said.