Arkansas can't ban treatment of transgender kids, court rules

File: Arkansas State Capitol building and grounds in Little Rock, Arkansas. (Photo by: Don & Melinda Crawford/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A federal appeals court on Thursday said Arkansas can't enforce its ban on transgender children receiving gender-affirming medical care.A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S.

Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a judge’s ruling temporarily blocking the state from enforcing the 2021 law. A trial is scheduled for October before the same judge on whether to permanently block the law.Arkansas was the first state to enact such a ban, which prohibits doctors from providing gender-confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment.

There are no doctors who perform gender-affirming surgery on minors in the state."Because the minor’s sex at birth determines whether or not the minor can receive certain types of medical care under the law, Act 626 discriminates on the basis of sex," the court's ruling Thursday said.The American Civil Liberties Union challenged the law on behalf of four transgender youth and their families, as well as two doctors who provide gender-confirming treatments."The Eighth Circuit was abundantly clear that the state’s ban on care does not advance any important governmental interest and the state’s defense of the law is lacking in legal or evidentiary support," Chase Strangio, deputy director for Transgender Justice at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a statement. "The state has no business categorically singling out this care for prohibition."Arkansas argued that the restriction is within the state’s authority to regulate.