A Missouri judge found that a state ban on transgender surgeries and hormone treatments for minors was constitutional Monday, just over a week before the US Supreme Court takes up a very similar case out of Tennessee.
Judge Robert Craig Carter highlighted the murky ethics behind the controversial treatments for gender dysphoria in his ruling on challenges from LGBTQ civil rights activists against the Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act, which was signed into law last year.
“The evidence from trial showed that the medical ethics of gender dysphoria treatment for children and adolescents are entirely unsettled,” Carter, who sits on the 44th Judicial Circuit Court of Missouri, wrote in a lengthy 72-page ruling.
“Any person — including a minor — would be able to obtain anything from meth, to ecstasy to abortion so long as a single medical professional were willing to recommend it,” he later cautioned.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) signed the law last year, and it went into effect in August 2023. It also enacted a three-year ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors unless they were in the middle of such treatment.
The measure slapped penalties on physicians who flout the law, including possible revocation of their medical license and the ability for patients to sue for at least 15 years with a minimum of $500,000 in damages for a successful suit.
Carter also pointed to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that concluded options for state legislatures must “be epically broad” in instances that are “fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties.”
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) quickly took a victory lap over the ruling.
“The Court has left Missouri’s law banning child mutilation in place, a resounding victory for our children. We are the first state in the nation to successfully defend such a law at the trial court level,” Bailey said in a statement.
“I’m extremely proud of the thousands of hours my office put in to shine a light on the lack of evidence supporting these irreversible procedures. We will never stop fighting to ensure Missouri is the safest state in the nation for children.”
Both Lambda Legal and the ACLU Missouri decried the ruling and vowed to appeal it.
“The court’s findings signal a troubling acceptance of discrimination, ignore an extensive trial record and the voices of transgender Missourians and those who care for them, and deny transgender adolescents and Medicaid beneficiaries from their right to access to evidence-based, effective, and often life-saving medical care,” they contended in a joint statement.
The law is set to sunset in 2027.
With that ruling, Missouri appears to be the first state where a trial court affirmed such a ban. At least 26 states have similar policies on the books, while 24 states and the nation’s capital have laws protecting access to such interventions.
Critics contend that minors are too young to consent to interventions aimed at altering their hormones or altering their genitalia.
In 2021, there were roughly 4,231 hormone therapies performed on minors between the ages of 6 and 17, 1,390 puberty blocker treatments for minors between 6 and 17 years old and 282 mastectomies for gender dysphoria on girls ages 13-17, according to data from Komodo Health Inc.
Diagnosed cases of gender dysphoria in minors skyrocketed from 15,172 in 2017 to 42,167 in 2021, per that dataset.
Next week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in US v. Skrmetti, in one of the most hotly watched items on its docket this term.
The case calls into question Tennessee’s prohibition on all treatments for “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”
The outgoing Biden administration has backed up the challengers in this case, who are arguing the ban infringes upon the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
President-elect Donald Trump previously pledged to pursue legislation restricting so-called gender-affirming care interventions on minors.
Trump, 78, is also reportedly mulling a ban on transgender service in the military, The Times, a British outlet, reported.
Tesla titan Elon Musk, the soon-to-be 47th president’s closest confidant during the transition, on Monday further endorsed a federal ban on child gender transition procedures.
