The real scandal in Alabama’s transgender youth care ban

  This much we know: Alabama’s gender-affirming care ban will be law for the foreseeable future.

  Attorneys for transgender young people and their families sued to overturn it. But after a three-year battle, the plaintiffs and the state moved to dismiss the lawsuit. The attorneys for the families said their clients had “to make heart-wrenching decisions that no family should ever have to make, and they are each making the decisions that are right for them.”

  To be sure, the broader legal landscape looks threatening. The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to uphold a similar ban on gender-affirming care in Tennessee. One can hardly blame parents for giving up on an unjust legal system.

How did Alabama’s transgender medication ban survive? The Dobbs decision.

  The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down federal abortion rights affects much more than reproductive health.

  Exhibit A: the battle over Alabama’s ban on gender-affirming medical care.

  Here’s some background. Gov. Kay Ivey signed the law, which prohibits the prescription of puberty blockers and hormones to transgender youth under the age of 19, in April 2022. U.S. District Judge Liles C. Burke blocked it the following month. The judge wrote that the statute burdened parents’ ability to make decisions for their children.

Throwing Alabama’s children and physicians to the wolves

  Three federal judges exposed Alabama physicians to felony charges last week.

  But U.S. Circuit Judge Barbara Lagoa wanted everyone to know it was complicated.

  “This case revolves around an issue that is surely of the utmost importance to all of the parties involved: the safety and wellbeing of the children of Alabama,” Lagoa wrote in a 49-page majority opinion allowing Alabama to make it a crime to offer medical treatment to transgender youth under age 19. “But it is complicated by the fact that there is a strong disagreement between the parties over what is best for those children. Absent a constitutional mandate to the contrary, these types of issues are quintessentially the sort that our system of government reserves to legislative, not judicial, action.”