Little Rock, AR– A federal judge has stopped a first-in-the-nation ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors, naming it unconstitutional.
U. S. District Judge Jay Moody issued a permanent injunction on the ban. The law would have prohibited all medical professionals in Arkansas from giving any form of gender-affirming care to minors.
Moody has a history in Arkansas, as he temporarily blocked a bill in 2021, which prohibited doctors referring patients to elsewhere for gender-affirming care.
“Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing.”
– Judge Moody
Bans like this have been put in place in 19 other states, and federal judges have blocked similar bans in Alabama and Indiana.
This is not “care” – it’s activists pushing a political agenda at the expense of our kids and subjecting them to permanent and harmful procedures. Only in the far-Left’s woke vision of America is it not appropriate to protect children. We will fight this and the Attorney General plans to appeal Judge Moody’s decision to the Eighth Circuit.
– Gov. of Arkansas Sarah Huckabee-Sanders
Florida has a law that goes further that Arkansas’ , by prohibiting the use of state money for gender-affirming care for youth, and placing new restriction on adults seeking those types of treatments.
Lawmakers who voted for this bill say no child should be able to alter their gender at such young-age.