By: Summer

Kentucky Follows Tennessee’s Lead!!!

See our article on the Tennessee case here: https://tjskoc.com/a-monumental-lgbtq-rights-case-is-barreling-toward-the-supreme-court/

Keep reading for reporting on this decision from the Kentucky Appellate Court!!!

Reporting from NBC News:

Appeals court lets Kentucky enforce ban on transgender care for minors

The law, enacted this year over the veto of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, prevents transgender minors from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

July 31, 2023, 8:03 PM EDT / Source: The Associated Press

By The Associated Press

A federal appeals court is allowing Kentucky to enforce a recently enacted ban on gender-affirming care for young transgender people while the issue is being litigated.

The 2-1 decision Monday from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati is not unexpected. The same three-judge panel ruled the same way earlier this month on a similar case in Tennessee.

The Kentucky law, enacted this year over the veto of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, prevents transgender minors from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

At least 20 states have now enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. Most of those states face lawsuits. A federal judge struck down Arkansas’ ban as unconstitutional. In other states, judges have issued disparate rulings on whether the laws can be enforced while the cases are being litigated.

In Kentucky, U.S. District Judge David Hale had initially blocked Kentucky from enforcing the ban. But he lifted that injunction July 14, after the Sixth Circuit issued its ruling in the Tennessee case.

Seven transgender children and their parents have sued to block the Kentucky law. They argue that it violates their constitutional rights and interferes with parental rights to seek established medical treatment for their children.

In Monday’s ruling, judges Jeffrey Sutton, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, and Amul Thapar, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said that the issues in the Kentucky case are essentially identical to those in Tennessee.

In the Tennessee case, the judges wrote that decisions on emerging policy issues like transgender care are generally better left to legislatures rather than judges. They offered a similar rationale Monday in the Kentucky case.

“The people of Kentucky enacted the ban through their legislature,” the judges wrote. “That body — not the officials who disagree with the ban — sets the Commonwealth’s policies.”

The dissenting judge, Helene White, noted that Kentucky’s ban does not include a grace period for patients who are already receiving care to continue treatment, as Tennessee’s law did.

As a result, White said the need for an injunction blocking the ban in Kentucky is even greater than it was in Tennessee.

“It seems obvious that there is a tremendous difference between a statute like Tennessee’s that allows flexibility regarding treatment decisions and time to explore alternatives and one like Kentucky’s that forces doctors to either discontinue treatment immediately or risk losing their license,” wrote White, who was first nominated by former President Bill Clinton and later nominated by Bush.

Reporting from Them.us:

Kentucky’s Ban on Care for Trans Minors Can Stand, a Federal Appeals Court Ruled

Healthcare providers in Kentucky will have to wean kids taking hormones or puberty blockers off these prescriptions.

For the second time this year, judges in the United State Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit have affirmed that Kentucky may proceed to enforce a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

The ruling, filed Monday in the case Doe v Thornbury, allows the state of Kentucky to enforce Senate Bill 150 — a sweeping anti-trans omnibus with restrictions on medical care, trans kids’ rights in school, and much more. Republicans rushed the law through the state legislature in March, stitching together multiple bills into a package that the ACLU of Kentucky then called “the worst anti-trans bill in the nation.” Governor Andy Beshear vetoed the bill but the Republican-led legislature overrode the veto. The law prohibits doctors from administering gender-affirming medical care to minor patients, including the prescription of hormones or puberty blockers, and requires medical providers to begin “weaning” any patients off that care immediately.

Monday’s appellate decision means enforcement will continue to advance, forcing medical professionals to continue weaning trans youth in their care off of their hormones and puberty blockers.

“The people of Kentucky enacted the ban through their legislature,” wrote Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton for the majority, arguing that the state did have a compelling interest in enforcing the law. Sutton referenced his own decision on another such bill in Tennessee earlier this year, in which he opined that — contrary to Supreme Court precedent — trans people are not protected by sex discrimination laws or the Americans with Disabilities Act, and that the overwhelming support for gender-affirming care among medical professionals is “surely relevant” but “not dispositive.”

Dissenting from Sutton’s ruling was Judge Helene White, who also dissented in part from the court’s Tennessee decision. Unlike Sutton, White wrote she believes the 20 anonymous plaintiffs in Doe v Thornbury are likely to succeed in proving SB 150 is unconstitutional. Citing “the greater risk of irreparable harm” to trans youth whose care has been restricted, White argued that the injunction should have been upheld at least in part to allow those who already receive gender-affirming care to continue accessing it for the duration of the case.

SB 150, White wrote, “forces doctors to either discontinue treatment immediately or risk losing their license if a stranger to the doctor-patient relationship second-guesses the doctor’s determination or documentation that interrupting treatment would harm the minor.”

Sutton’s ruling still holds sway, however, making his Sixth Circuit court an outlier in upholding medical bans that other federal courts have struck down in steadily increasing numbers across the U.S. In June, U.S. District Court Judge James Moody Jr. eviscerated Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care for minors, finding that it violated their civil rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments — just two weeks after another district court granted an injunction blocking Florida’s ban.

One in five trans youth live in a state that has banned gender-affirming care, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Even in states where anti-trans health care bans have been struck down or temporarily blocked, trans kids and their families still face major challenges to accessing that care safely and consistently. “Today we’re safe, but I don’t trust that tomorrow we will be,” one mother of a trans child in Florida told Them in March.