LEXINGTON, Ky. — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the portion of a law that would ban gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers, for Kentucky transgender youth.
Seven transgender youth and their families sued the state in May, challenging the medical portion of Senate Bill 150 and asking for temporary injunctive relief. The families, who use pseudonyms in the lawsuit, argued the new law violates both plaintiffs’ and their parents’ individual protected rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
On Wednesday, hours before the full law was slated to take effect Thursday, U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Kentucky David Hale found merit in that claim and temporarily blocked that portion of the law from being enforced.
“Based on the evidence submitted, the court finds that the treatments barred by SB 150 are medically appropriate and necessary for some transgender children under the evidence-based standard of care accepted by all major medical organizations in the United States,” Hale wrote in his order. The families who’ve sued have “shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits of their constitutional challenges to SB 150.”
The bill, passed this session, was the subject of massive protests in Frankfort this year, with many in the LGBTQ community saying that the omnibus bill unfairly targeted them and that it was “anti-trans.”
Senate Bill 150 passed with the support of the vast majority of GOP legislators, who have supermajorities in both chambers of the Kentucky General Assembly. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed the bill, but the legislature overrode his veto. Numerous major medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Medical Association, have filed amicus briefs in support of the plaintiffs who assert the law is unconstitutional.
In addition to banning banning puberty-blockers, hormones and gender-affirming surgeries for kids under 18, Senate Bill 150 also bans discussion and lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation, prevents trans students from using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, and stops school districts from requiring teachers use a student’s preferred pronouns.
In his Wednesday order, Hale debunked many of the assertions Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron cited in his defense of the law, and chided him for relying on “unnecessarily inflammatory language.”
“The Commonwealth offers no evidence that Kentucky healthcare providers prescribe puberty-blockers or hormones primarily for financial gain as opposed to patients’ well-being,” Hale said, referencing a claim made by Cameron. “Nor do the quoted studies from ‘some European countries’ questioning the efficacy of the drugs, or anecdotes from a handful of ‘detransitioners’ banning the treatments entirely, as SB 150 would do.”
Hale continued, “doctors currently decide, based on the widely accepted standard of care, whether puberty blockers or hormones are appropriate for a particular patient. Far from ‘protecting the integrity and ethics of the medical profession.’” Rather, “SB 150 would prevent doctors from acting in accordance with the applicable standard of care,” the judge wrote.
Cameron claimed in a filing that the law doesn’t violate parents’ due process to seek medical care for their children, because they do not have “fundamental right to obtain whatever drugs they want for their children, without restriction.”
But plaintiffs’ parents don’t allege this in their lawsuit, Hale said. Rather, they insist on “the right to obtain established medical treatments to protect their children’s health and well-being,” he wrote.
If the law were to take full effect, it would “eliminate treatments that have already significantly benefited six of the seven minor plaintiffs and prevent other transgender children from accessing these beneficial treatments in the future,” Hale wrote.
Blocking the law from taking effect “will not result in any child being forced to take puberty blockers or hormones,” he continued. “Rather, the treatments will continue to be limited to those patients whose parents and health care providers decide, in accordance with the applicable standard of care, that such treatment is appropriate.”
ACLU, LGBTQ groups celebrate
The ACLU of Kentucky, who asked for the temporary injunction while its case against the law proceeds through the courts, cheered Hale’s order in a statement.
“We are grateful to the Court for enjoining this egregious ban on medically necessary care, which would have caused harm for countless young Kentuckians. This is a win, but it is only the first step. We’re prepared to fight for families’ right to make their own private medical decisions in court, and to continue doing everything in our power to ensure access to medical care is permanently secured in Kentucky,” ACLU of Kentucky Legal Director Corey Shapiro said.
The Fairness Campaign, an LGBTQ rights advocacy group, said that “justice (was) served” in Hale’s ruling.
“Kentucky’s trans kids and their families have been living in fear of the approaching date the law would take effect — they can all breathe a sigh of relief now as reason wins out over hateful, discriminatory rhetoric. We knew Senate Bill 150 was unconstitutional when state lawmakers rushed it through in the final days of the legislative session, and now all of Kentucky knows it too,” it said in a statement.
Rebecca Blankenship, the state’s first openly trans elected official and executive director of Ban Conversion Therapy Kentucky, also praised the order.
“A bill that would have wreaked havoc tomorrow was thwarted by the U.S. Constitution today,” Blankenship said. “This will be a breath of air for trans youth, whose admissions to in-patient psychiatric care facilities dramatically spiked after the 2023 legislative session.”
Cameron: A ‘misguided decision’
Cameron, who is the Republican nominee for governor against Beshear this year, said the ruling “trampled” the right of the state legislature to make policy.
“Senate Bill 150 is a commonsense law that protects Kentucky children from unnecessary medical experimentation with powerful drugs and hormone treatments … I will always fight the radical idea that risky drugs and life-altering surgical mutilations should be tools to put confused children on an inevitable path toward a life of gender dysphoria,” Cameron said in a statement provided by the Office of the Attorney General.
The Republican Party of Kentucky focused its energy in the aftermath of Hale’s decision on contrasting Cameron, who has defended the law in court, and Beshear, who vetoed it. Beshear’s veto of Senate Bill 150 cited “too much government interference in personal healthcare” and limitations on parents’ right to make medical decisions for their children.
“There are two candidates for Governor. Here’s what they believe: Andy Beshear believes kids as young as 8 and 9 years old should have access to sex change surgery and chemicals. Daniel Cameron does not. Radical gender ideology has its candidate in this race, and it’s not Daniel Cameron. It’s Andy Beshear,” Sean Southard, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Kentucky and the Cameron campaign, said.
Beshear has not stated that he supports allowing minors to undergo gender transition surgery. The bill that he vetoed did include a provision banning such surgeries, but those procedures were not taking place in Kentucky before the bill was passed.
