Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for minors to go into effect for now - Politico

A Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth can go into effect immediately, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Saturday, temporarily staying a lower court’s ruling and marking the first federal court ruling of its kind.

The 6th Circuit ruling diverges from a recent pattern of federal courts permanently or temporarily blocking similar statewide bans on gender-affirming care for minors, including in Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Indiana and Kentucky.

The court’s decision will now prevent doctors in Tennessee from providing gender-affirming care — including puberty blockers and gender-affirming surgery — to minors, reversing a lower court’s decision to suspend the ban while it was being challenged by families and advocacy groups.

The ruling remains preliminary, as the 6th Circuit court plans to issue a full ruling by Sept. 30 after hearing arguments for a full appeal of the ban. In a filing Saturday, the court indicated it would decide the pending Kentucky case alongside Tennessee’s and set an accelerated schedule for briefing on those cases. However the schedule runs into next month and the next regularly scheduled argument session for the 6th Circuit after those deadlines is not until October.

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The panel of three judges voted 2-1 on the decision, ruling that advocacy groups’ efforts to challenge the law’s adherence to the 14th Amendment was unconstitutional. In his opinion, [Judge Jeffrey Sutton] wrote that the federal district court that suspended the ban in June had erred by invalidating the law facially, instead of as it applied to the plaintiffs, and by assuming “authority to issue a state-wide injunction.”

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Tennessee is one of at least 14 states where Republican lawmakers have sought to restrict or ban gender-affirming care for minors.

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