Ohio’s Anti-Transgender Ban Officially Enforced
A judge gives the green light to Ohio's law banning gender-affirming care and barring transgender athletes from girls' sports teams.
An Ohio judge ruled that Ohio’s law banning transgender youth from seeking out gender-affirming care can take effect immediately. The law also contains provisions preventing transgender girls from participating in female-designated athletic activities.
Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael Holbrook rescinded an earlier order he had issued in April blocking state authorities from enforcing the law.
He ruled that the ban doesn’t violate the Ohio Constitution’s health care freedom amendment, or an Ohio law requiring legislation be limited to a single subject, reports The Columbus Dispatch.
“The court finds the health care ban reasonably limits parents’ rights to make decisions about their children’s medical care consistent with the state’s deeply rooted legitimate interest in the regulation of medical profession and medical treatments,” Holbrook wrote in his decision.
Under the law — which Republican lawmakers passed over objections from Republican Gov. Mike DeWine — doctors are not allowed to prescribe hormones and puberty blockers and are prevented from recommending surgical interventions for transgender youth. (The law contains an exemption allowing nearly identical surgical interventions for intersex youth.)
The Ohio Attorney General’s office had previously argued that gender dysphoria should only be addressed through mental health interventions.
Critics of the law argue that the state has no business intruding on the right of parents, in consultation with medical experts, to allow their children to pursue hormonal treatments to treat their gender dysphoria.
“This loss is not just devastating for our brave clients, but for the many transgender youth and their families across the state who require this critical, life-saving health care,” Freda Levenson, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, which represented the transgender plaintiffs and their families in the case.
Levenson called the court’s decision “a genuine setback.”
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