Judge Allows Oklahoma Ban on Gender Treatments for Minors

TUSLA, OK — (10-10-23) — U.S. District Judge John Heil has allowed a state law banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors to take effect, adding to a growing split among judges on whether such laws are constitutional and are able to be enforced based on the constitution. Gender-affirming care includes puberty blockers, hormones and surgery.

Major U.S. medical associations continue to educate people that gender-affirming care is an appropriate and potentially life-saving treatment for gender dysphoria, or distress caused by the mismatch between transgender people’s sex assigned at birth and their gender identity.

Needless to say right wing culture warriors determined to destroy the LGBTQ Community say that Gender-affirming care is unproven and risk long-term harm. Of course they have yet to produce evidence to their allegations.

However in a preliminary order issued last Thursday, U.S. District Judge John Heil said “Families challenging the law were not likely to succeed in proving that it illegally discriminates on the basis of sex or infringes on parents’ rights.”

Representing the plaintiffs in this case, Lambda Legal, had no immediate comment following the ruling. However a spokesperson for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond was quick to say that the office “continues to fulfill its duty to defend” the law and “has won a ruling that results in full enforcement of that law.”

The new anti-LGBTQ Oklahoma law passed in May, makes it now a crime to provide minors “medical or surgical services performed for the purpose of attempting to affirm the minor’s perception of his or her gender or biological sex, if that perception is inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex.”

Five families sued the state to block the law in May. Lambda Legal argued that the law discriminated based on transgender status, and violated parents’ rights to direct their children’s medical treatment.

Heil, refusing to halt the law while the lawsuit proceeds, rejected the arguments by saying that the law targeted particular treatments, not sex, and that the U.S. Constitution does not recognize a “fundamental right” for parents to choose particular medical treatments for their children.

The decision comes a week after a federal appeals court allowed similar laws to take effect in RED STATES Tennessee and Kentucky. Alabama’s ban went into effect in August.

The only bright light on this story is that federal district courts in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and Indiana have overturned their Gender-affirming care bans. Even Montana throughout such an outrageous ban.

Sooner or later this conflict among federal courts will arrive before the U.S. Supreme Court, however at this time there are no current petitions scheduled before the court on this issue.

Article by: Paul Goldberg, Staff Writer

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