A day after a judge struck down a related Georgia legislation, a U.S. appeals court on Monday reinstated an Alabama statute supported by Republicans that forbids the use of hormones and puberty-inhibiting medications to treat gender dysphoria in transgender adolescents.
The families and doctors who are contesting the law, according to a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, “have not presented any authority that supports the existence of a constitutional right” for parents to treat their children with “transitioning medications subject to medically accepted standards”, Reuters reported.
In her opinion piece for the panel, whose three justices were all chosen by former president Donald Trump, U.S. Circuit Judge Barbara Lagoa stated that Alabama had “a compelling interest in protecting children from drugs, particularly those for which there is uncertainty regarding benefits, recent surges in use, and irreversible effects.”
In May of last year, U.S. District Judge Liles Burke, another Trump appointee, issued a preliminary order preventing the Alabama legislation.
The 11th Circuit’s decision was rendered a day after U.S. District Judge Sarah Geraghty in Atlanta imposed an injunction to stop the implementation of a related Georgia legislation in response to a lawsuit by parents of transgender children. The ban, according to Geraghty, a Biden appointee, “places a special burden on transgender minors because their gender identity does not match their birth sex.”
Republican Christopher Carr, Georgia’s attorney general, said he intended to appeal it before the 11th Circuit.
While opponents assert that gender-affirming therapies like hormones and puberty blockers are untested and hazardous, proponents of these therapies argue that they are beneficial to the mental health of transgender youngsters.
