Fresh on the heels of last week’s ruling — by a Trump-appointed judge, no less — blocking enforcement of Indiana’s ban on providing gender-affirming care to transgender young people, we have two more encouraging federal court decisions to bring you. Or maybe three, since one of them is a two-parter from Florida.
Previously!
Trump Judge Tosses Indiana Anti- Trans Law Because STOP PICKING ON KIDS GODDAMMIT
Ron DeSantis Achieves New Dickishness Personal Worst
The biggest win is in Arkansas, where the nation’s first total ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors became the first such law to be ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, not just put on hold while litigation goes forward. Arkansas can still appeal the ruling, and surely will, but unless Tuesday’s ruling by US District Judge James Moody Jr. is overturned, the Arkansas law is now in a coffin, waiting to be nailed shut or opened up by higher courts. Let it be buried for good, and soon, please.
As NPR explains, Moody found that
the state of Arkansas violated several sections of the U.S. Constitution when it banned all gender-affirming treatments for people under 18. The 80-page ruling says depriving trans minors of treatments like hormone therapy would cause them irreparable harm, and that delaying care until adulthood would force teens to go through changes inconsistent with their gender identity.
The verdict comes after an eight-day trial in December, where several of the state’s witnesses admitted they didn’t have experience treating transgender teens, and offered no evidence to dispute decades of scientific research.
Gosh, seems Moody wasn’t a fan of the frequent rightwing argument that medical experts are part of the problem because they’re simply forcing woke ideology on kids who only need some Bible to turn them away from being who they are. Moody’s ruling firmly rejected the claim that the legislators merely sought to “protect” kids, finding that in reality,
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. […] The testimony of well-credentialed experts, doctors who provide gender-affirming medical care in Arkansas, and families that rely on that care directly refutes any claim by the State that the Act advances an interest in protecting children.”
Back in 2021, Judge Moody had already blocked the law from being enforced, after the ACLU sued on behalf of two medical providers and the families of several transgender teens. Moody found, as have other judges, that the law violated the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection, as well as the due process protections of the Fifth and 14th Amendments. On top of that, Moody agreed with the ACLU’s argument that the law also violated doctors’ First Amendment rights, by banning them from referring trans patients to out of state providers of gender-affirming care. As of yet, no trans care bans have been overturned on Third Amendment grounds, but that might be fun.
The ban on gender-affirming care was initially vetoed in 2021 by then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson, but the bigots in the state Lege came right back and overrode the veto.
In Florida, we have two rulings from US District Judge Robert Hinkle that block parts of Ron DeSantis’s war on LGBTQ+ people. in the first, as Yr Wonkette discussed earlier this month, Hinkle granted a temporary injunction against Florida’s ban on gender-affirming care, allowing three trans kids to receive puberty blockers while litigation seeking to overturn the law goes forward. As our Liz Dye wrote then:
“The elephant in the room should be noted at the outset. Gender identity is real,” writes US District Judge Robert Hinkle, hinting at the “unspoken suggestion running just below the surface in some of the proceedings that led to adoption of the statute and rules at issue—and just below the surface in the testimony of some of the defense experts—is that transgender identity is not real, that it is made up.”
But you don’t get to ban something, particularly gender-based medical care, based on barely concealed bigotry.
“Any proponent of the challenged statute and rules should put up or shut up: do you acknowledge that there are individuals with actual gender identities opposite their natal sex, or do you not? Dog whistles ought not be tolerated,” the court bristles.
Goddamn right, Judge Hinkle. While that injunction only applies to the three trans kids whose parents sued, it set up the reasoning for what’s likely to be a later decision throwing out the ban altogether.
Hinkle followed that up with a ruling yesterday in which he found unconstitutional a different prong of Florida’s anti-trans laws, striking down an administrative rule and a law that prohibited Medicaid payments for gender-affirming care, including for trans adults, under the bullshit rationale that the state can decide how its tax funds are spent. Except no, you can’t do that if you’re discriminating against people, you states-rights peckerwoods.
“There is no rational basis for a state to categorically ban these treatments or exclude them from the state’s Medicaid coverage,” stated Hinkle, who was first appointed to the court by former President Bill Clinton.
Hinkle ruled that the ban on Medicaid paying for hormone therapy or “puberty blockers” was an equal protection violation and went against federal Medicaid law as well as the Affordable Care Act. He called the restrictions “purposeful” discrimination against transgender individuals and not a “legitimate state interest.” The lawsuit was brought against the state on behalf of two transgender adult men and the families of two transgender minors.
And like the Arkansas case, this isn’t a temporary order while litigation continues; the Florida rule and related law are toast, although Hinkle’s ruling remains subject to appeal up the line.
And that’s how it’s going to get done. These laws are going to go down, piece by hateful piece, in courts across the country. What happens to them when they get to the Supreme Court is probably still in doubt, but the fact that Indiana’s trans care ban was too much for at least one Trump-appointed judge is cause for hope — that, and the fact that so far, not a single federal court has upheld the laws.
[NPR / Ruling in Brandt v. Rutledge / Politico / Ruling in Dekker v. Weida / Image generated by DreamStudio AI]
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