Four families have initiated legal action against a Georgia law aimed at restricting gender-affirming care for transgender youth. They argue that the law violates both parental rights and equal protection guarantees.
The families filed a complaint on Thursday, seeking an injunction to prevent the ban from going into effect on Saturday.
The ban, signed into law by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp in March, prohibits minors from receiving hormone replacement therapies and sex reassignment surgeries from licensed healthcare facilities to treat gender dysphoria. The law instead advocates for counseling and allowing transgender children time to mature and discover their own identities.
Medical providers who breach this law risk losing their licenses.
The lawsuit, filed by anonymous plaintiffs for their safety, asserts that the ban violates parental rights to make healthcare decisions for their children and prevents them from obtaining appropriate treatment for gender dysphoria. Furthermore, the plaintiffs argue that it violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection by denying transgender youth essential and often life-saving medical care based on their sex and gender status.
The complaint states, “Defendants cannot demonstrate any rational basis, let alone an important or compelling one, for the Health Care Ban, which prevents transgender youth from accessing safe, established, and necessary medical care.”
TransParent, an organization supporting parents and caregivers of transgender youth, has joined the lawsuit along with the parents of transgender children.
According to Beth Littrell, the senior supervising attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s LGBTQ rights and special litigation, the ban on “necessary medical care is just cruel.” The Southern Poverty Law Center, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, the Human Rights Foundation, and the law firm O’Melveny & Myers, is representing the plaintiffs.
Similar bans have been blocked in Arkansas, Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Florida.
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