Judge blocks Alabama law banning certain medication for transgender minors

A federal judge on Friday blocked part of a new Alabama law criminalizing the performance of gender-transition procedures on minors.

The law, which was signed by Alabama governor Kay Ivey in April, also designates the prescribing of puberty blockers or hormones treatments to minors as a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison. Under Alabama state law, a minor is defined as any person under 19 years old.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Liles Burke, allowed the prohibition on gender-transition surgeries to remain in effect but granted a temporary injunction to block the sections of the law banning prescription of puberty blockers and hormone medication, in response to a lawsuit.

Parents “have a fundamental right to direct the medical care of their children,” Burke wrote in his opinion. “This right includes the more specific right to treat their children with transitioning medications subject to medically accepted standards.”

Burke explained that “the uncontradicted record evidence is that at least twenty-two major medical associations in the United States endorse transitioning medications as well-established, evidence-based treatments for gender dysphoria in minors.”

Burke allowed another part of the law to remain in place, which bars teachers and other school officials from concealing a student’s transgender status from his or her parents.

The law also prohibits school nurses, counsellors, teachers, principals, and other school officials from trying to “encourage or coerce” a minor to withhold from their parents the “fact that the minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s sex,” or from withholding that information from parents.

In a separate complaint against the Alabama law, the U.S. Justice Department said in April that the bill “discriminates against transgender youth by denying them access to certain forms of medically necessary care.”