WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed Idaho to enforce a law that would have banned gender-affirming health care for transgender teens.
Filing an urgent appeal A lawsuit filed by Idaho officials said the law, passed last year, could be enforced statewide but not against two plaintiffs who challenged it.
The court’s three liberal justices challenged the ruling, saying the law should have been blocked entirely.
U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Winmill ruled in December that the state cannot enforce the law while the litigation is pending. The state appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, but that court has not yet ruled.
The law, like measures passed by other states, prevents transgender minors from using what Winmill calls “commonly accepted medical treatment,” including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical procedures.
Officials later appealed to the Supreme Court, where conservatives held a 6-3 majority, saying the injunction was too broad and the law should be blocked only for the two plaintiffs in the suit.
In explaining his vote to allow the law to take effect, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch said the lower court “went much further” than necessary to delay the entire law. He noted, for example, that Winmill struck down a provision barring transaction “despite the fact that neither party before the court sought access to those transactions.”
Gorsuch said the Supreme Court’s intervention should be viewed as a “welcome development.”
In a dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the case “presents numerous reasons to exercise restraint,” but instead the court decided to step in and was guilty of “micromanaging” lower courts.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs, two transgender teenagers, said the judge’s block on the entire law was necessary because, if enacted, it could threaten all gender-affirming health care services in the state.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents teenagers, said in a statement that the ruling was “a devastating outcome for transgender youth and their families across the state” and “allowed the state to cut off care that thousands of families rely on.” to sow more confusion and disorder.”
Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador, a Republican, said in a statement that the state has a duty to protect children from “life-changing drugs and procedures.”
She said that minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria “deserve love, support and medical care rooted in biological reality.”
The plaintiffs, identified only as Pam Poe and Jane Doe in court documents, say the law, called the Vulnerable Children Protection Act, discriminates on the basis of sex, among other things, and violates the 14th Amendment.
Po is a 16-year-old transgender girl who is prescribed puberty blockers. Doe is a 17-year-old transgender girl who was prescribed puberty blockers and started hormone therapy.
Both say medical treatment has improved their mental health.
There are more than 20 states adopted similar prohibitionsAccording to the Movement Development Project, an LGBTQ rights think tank.
The Supreme Court is likely to focus on the broader legal question in the future as challenges to the law work their way through the court system.
Appeals against similar laws in Tennessee and Kentucky will be heard by justices in the coming weeks.