A Maryland transgender boy with disabilities died last year in what police are calling a case of criminal neglect by his parents, who have been charged with second-degree murder.
Morgan Moore died May 10, 2022, at age 17 at his home in Montgomery Village. His passing is just now being recognized as one of the violent deaths of transgender people in 2022, as some media reports at the time of his death misgendered him.
Police and paramedics were called to his home, where they found him unresponsive. He weighed only 79 pounds, and his father and mother, Dominique and Cynthia Moore, said he hadn’t seen a doctor in two years, according to local media and the Disability Day of Mourning website. He had diabetes and multiple sclerosis and was suffering from long-term effects of COVID-19. He had lost the ability to walk and had an abscess on his back.
There were 10 adults and children living in the home. Authorities removed six minor children from the Moores and placed them in foster care. Court documents showed the home was filthy, with animal feces throughout, nonfunctioning toilets, little lighting, and not enough beds for family members, Washington, D.C.’s Fox affiliate reports. The children were homeschooled and isolated, communicating with people outside the family only through video games.
Morgan was out as transgender, but not all family members recognized or respected his identity. He was “a celebrated artist, self taught guitarist, cook, keyboard player, gamer and all around great person,” according to an online tribute page. He had expressed a wish to travel to Japan.
“I just want my brother to be remembered as the artist and the person he was,” one sibling told the Fox station. “He was as good person, and I want people who are transphobic and not accepting of their children to accept their kids for who they are and love them no matter what.”
The local medical examiner did not officially classify Morgan’s death as a homicide until April. Then in May, his parents were both charged with second-degree murder and six counts of neglect of a minor.
“What happened to Morgan was inhumane,” said a statement from Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative. “Morgan deserved the same respect and love from his parents as he received from his siblings, who were such a loving support in his life. Morgan’s beautiful memory is a reminder to all of us that we need to do better. Folks living with disabilities, Black and Brown people, and transgender people require the same love and respect that is given so freely to the many who take it for granted. We’ll remember Morgan as the bright artist and good person that he was.”
The number of gender-affirming surgeries in the U.S. nearly tripled from 2016 to 2019, likely due to more insurers covering the procedures, with top surgery more common than genital surgery, according to a new study.
The study was published online Wednesday in the American Medical Association’s JAMA Network Open. It was conducted by faculty at the medical schools of Columbia University in New York City and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, using data from the Nationwide Ambulatory Surgery Sample and the National Inpatient Sample.
The study identified 48,019 patients who underwent gender-affirming surgery from 2016 through 2020. The authors found that the number of these surgeries rose from 4,552 in 2016 to a peak of 13,011 in 2019, then declined slightly to 12,818 in 2020. The decline in 2020 is likely due to restrictions on in-person health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers observed.
In the period covered by the study, 27,187 patients (56.6 percent) had breast or chest surgery, 16,872 (35.1 percent) underwent genital surgery, and 6,669 (13.9 percent) had facial and other cosmetic procedures. Some patients had more than one type of surgery. “Breast and chest procedures made up the greatest percentage of the surgical interventions in younger patients while genital surgical procedures were greater in older patients,” the study noted.
The study backs up what has been pointed out as states pass or debate bans on gender-affirming surgery for minors — genital surgery is not usually suggested for young people and is rate among them. Among patients aged 12 to 18, 87.4 percent had breast or chest surgery, while only 11 percent had genital surgery, the researchers found. Most bans that have been enacted or proposed deal with people under age 18, with 18 considered the age of majority.
Gender-affirming surgeries “were most common in patients aged 19 to 30 years,” the authors reported. “This is in line with prior work that demonstrated that most patients first experience gender dysphoria at a young age, with approximately three-quarters of patients reporting gender dysphoria by age 7 years. These patients subsequently lived for a mean of 23 years for transgendermen and 27 years for transgender women before beginning gender transition treatments.”
While the right wing sometimes claims there is “social contagion” leading more people to seek out these treatments, the study’s authors proposed a different explanation. “The increase in [gender-affirming surgery] is likely due in part to federal and state laws requiring coverage of transition-related care, although actual insurance coverage of specific procedures is variable,” they wrote. The majority of patients in the study — 60.5 percent — had private insurance coverage, while 25.3 percent were Medicaid recipients.
The study noted the benefits of gender-affirming care at a time when it’s under attack, with states banning it for minors and some banning it for certain adults, such as those whose health care is covered by Medicaid.
“Despite many medical societies recognizing the necessity of gender-affirming care, several states have enacted legislation or policies that restrict gender-affirming care and services, particularly in adolescence,” the authors wrote. “These regulations are barriers for patients who seek gender-affirming care and provide legal and ethical challenges for clinicians. As the use of [gender-affirming surgery] increases, delivering equitable gender-affirming care in this complex landscape will remain a public health challenge.”
The study has some limitations, the researchers added. One of them is that “while we comprehensively captured inpatient and ambulatory surgical procedures in large, nationwide data sets, undoubtedly, a small number of procedures were performed in other settings; thus, our estimates may underrepresent the actual number of procedures performed each year in the US,” they wrote.
Still, the information is valuable, Dr. Jason D. Wright, the lead researcher and the chief of gynecologic oncology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, told The New York Times.
“There’s been a sense that more patients are asking about it, and ultimately pursuing it, but there wasn’t good data,” he said. “Ours is one of the first studies to quantify the age groups and the procedures they’re undergoing.”
A Texas judge blocked the state’s upcoming ban on transition-related medical care for minors Friday as a judge in Missouri ruled that a similar ban in that state could take effect Monday, the latest in a legal fight over efforts by conservatives to restrict such care around the country.
In Texas, a group of families and doctors sued to block the state law, arguing it would violate parents’ rights and have devastating consequences for transgender children and teens who would be denied treatment recommended by their physicians and parents.
The ruling landed just ahead of the Sept. 1 start date for the ban. The Texas Attorney General’s office was expected to quickly file an appeal to let the law take effect.
The Missouri ruling by St. Louis Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer means that beginning next week, health care providers are prohibited from providing transition-related surgeries to minors. Trans youth who began puberty blockers or hormones before Monday will be allowed to continue on those medications, but other minors won’t have access to those drugs.
Some adults will also lose access to gender-affirming care. Medicaid no longer will cover treatments for adults, and the state will not provide those surgeries to people who are incarcerated.
Physicians who violate the law face having their licenses revoked and being sued by patients. The law makes it easier for former patients to sue, giving them 15 years to go to court and promising at least $500,000 in damages if they succeed.
The ACLU of Missouri, Lambda Legal, and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner last month sued to overturn the Missouri law on behalf of doctors, LGBTQ+ organizations, and three families of transgender minors, arguing that it is discriminatory. They asked that the law be temporarily blocked as the court challenge against it plays out. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Sept. 22.
But Ohmer wrote that the plaintiffs’ arguments were “unpersuasive and not likely to succeed.”
“The science and medical evidence is conflicting and unclear. Accordingly, the evidence raises more questions than answers,” Ohmer wrote in his ruling. “As a result, it has not clearly been shown with sufficient possibility of success on the merits to justify the grant of a preliminary injunction.”
One plaintiff, a 10-year-old transgender boy, has not yet started puberty and consequently has not yet started taking puberty blockers. His family is worried he will begin puberty after the law takes effect, meaning he will not be grandfathered in and will not have access to puberty blockers for the next four years until the law sunsets.
The law expires in August 2027.
Proponents of the law argued gender-affirming medical treatments are unsafe and untested.
Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office wrote in a court brief that blocking the law “would open the gate to interventions that a growing international consensus has said may be extraordinarily damaging.”
The office cited restrictions on gender-affirming treatments for minors in countries including England and Norway, although those nations have not enacted outright bans.
An Associated Press email requesting comment from the Attorney General’s Office was not immediately returned Friday.
Every major medical organization in the U.S., including the American Medical Association, has opposed bans on gender-affirming care for minors and supported the medical care for youth when administered appropriately. Lawsuits have been filed in several states where bans have been enacted this year.
“We will work with patients to get the care they need in Missouri, or, in Illinois, where gender-affirming care is protected under state law,” Yamelsie Rodríguez, president and CEO, Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said in a statement after the ruling.
The Food and Drug Administration approved puberty blockers 30 years ago to treat children with precocious puberty — a condition that causes sexual development to begin much earlier than usual. Sex hormones — synthetic forms of estrogen and testosterone — were approved decades ago to treat hormone disorders and for birth control.
The FDA has not approved the medications specifically as a treatment for trans youth. But they have been used for many years for that purpose “off label,” a common and accepted practice for many medical conditions. The mediations are also used to treat early-onset puberty and other health conditions in children. Doctors who treat trans patients say those decades of use are proof the treatments are not experimental.
Florida’s State Board of Education has approved new penalties to enforce the state’s anti-transgender bathroom law.
Signed into law in May by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is also running for his party’s presidential nomination in 2024, Florida’s House Bill 1521 went into effect in July. It requires people to use bathroom and changing facilities that correspond to the gender they were assigned at birth and applies to public schools, universities, parks, prisons, and other government buildings but not to businesses and healthcare facilities. DeSantis has said the law will ensure women’s safety, based on the myth that trans people are violent sexual predators who prey on innocent women and children.
Students who speak out for LGBTQ+ rights say they face retaliation from hostile school administrations determined to silence them.
As The Hill reports, on Wednesday the DeSantis-appointed State Board of Education voted unanimously to adopt a proposal outlining disciplinary measures for students and employees at state colleges who violate the law. The new rule requires the 28 public community and state colleges in the state’s college system, which is separate from the Florida university system, to update their student and employee codes of conduct to reflect the anti-trans law and establish disciplinary procedures for employees by April 1.
“Disciplinary actions may utilize a progressive discipline process that includes verbal warnings, written reprimands, suspension without pay, and termination,” the proposal states. “The disciplinary action taken should be based on the specific circumstances of the offense; however, a second documented offense must result in a termination.”
Schools are not required to provide unisex restrooms, and the requirements also apply to student housing. As The Hill notes, this will result in transgender and nonbinary students living in college dorms being unable to use restrooms that align with their gender identity.
The rule was met with opposition during the public comment period at Wednesday’s meeting. The mother of a transgender teenager said that the slate of anti-trans laws signed by DeSantisthis year has made her child fear for their life. A rising high school senior, they have opted not to apply to any colleges in Florida as a result.
Former Florida state Representative and current policy advisor at Equality Florida Carlos Guillermo Smith, who is running for state senate, said that the “new level of fear and intimidation” in the state has one goal: “to root transgender people out of the Florida College System.”
“It is death by a million cuts, where you just created such a toxic and hostile environment for trans people in our state that they no longer are going to want to call Florida home,” Smith told The Hill. “They’re just going to leave.”
The number of gender-affirming surgeries in the U.S. nearly tripled from 2016 to 2019 before dropping slightly in 2020, according to a study published Wednesday.
The increase likely reflects expanded insurance coverage for transgender care after the Obama administration and some states actively discouraged discrimination based on gender identity, lead author Dr. Jason Wright of Columbia University said. The dip in 2020 can be attributed to the pandemic.
About 48,000 patients underwent such surgeries during the five years studied, with about 13,000 procedures done in 2019, the peak year, and 12,800 in 2020.
A little more than half the patients were ages 19 to 30. Surgeries in patients 18 and younger, were rare: fewer than 1,200 in the highest volume year.
In the last couple of years, many states have taken steps to restrict or ban transgender care for people under age 18, adding to waiting lists of patients seeking care in states that have declared themselves refuges for transgender people.
“This age group is really not what’s driving the overall increase in gender-affirming surgery that we found,” Wright said.
Among the youngest patients, the most common surgeries were breast and chest procedures, with more than 3,000 young people undergoing such operations during the five-year period.
These were likely transgender males — generally high school graduates — having their breasts removed, said Dr. Loren Schechter of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who specializes in gender-affirming surgery and was not involved in the study. Having breast surgery at that age allows them to “go to the next phase of their life in a body with which they’re comfortable and is synchronous with their identity,” he said.
The study, published in JAMA Network Open, did not look at more common treatments in minors such as puberty blockers and hormones.
Researchers analyzed records from two national surgery databases. For all age groups, breast surgeries were the most common type, followed by genital surgeries. The researchers also counted about 6,600 cosmetic procedures such as liposuction, face lifts and nose reshaping.
The gender identities of the patients were unclear in the data and couldn’t be inferred in categories like breast reconstruction, which could be for either transgender males or females.
Private insurance covered most patients who had such surgeries, the researchers found. About 1 in 4 patients received coverage through Medicaid, the federal-state health care insurance program that helps pay for health care for low-income people.
Support for abortion access remains high among both Democratic and Republican voters, and as such, Republicans have resorted to trying to trick people into voting for anti-abortion measures – and they’re using anti-trans fearmongering to do it.
In several states, Republicans have tried to convince voters that ballot measures seeking to restrict reproductive rights will also protect youth from Democrats – who they say are trying to force children into gender transitions.
A recent report from Slatedetailed how Republicans have (unsuccessfully so far) used this tactic in Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
In Michigan last year, Republicans spent millions of dollars trying to defeat an abortion rights amendment by trying to convince voters it also would have allowed doctors to perform gender-affirming surgery on children without their parents’ consent.
The amendment did pass, and it gave the people of Michigan full decision-making power when it comes to “prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion care, miscarriage management, and infertility care.” Republicans released ads trying to make voters believe that the inclusion of “sterilization” in the language somehow meant kids would be allowed to transition without their parents knowing. Legal experts refuted this claim and said the amendment could not be interpreted as such.
In Ohio, Republicans ran anti-trans ads in an effort to get people to vote for a ballot measure that had nothing to do with trans rights but would have stopped an abortion rights amendment.
An ad funded by the right-wing group “Protect Women Ohio” shows a parent reading a bedtime story to a young girl. A voiceover states, “You promised you’d keep the bad guys away. Protect her.” It warns that “trans ideology” is being pushed in classrooms and that kids are being encouraged to undergo gender transitions. The ad encouraged parents to protect their rights by voting yes on August 8th to Issue 1, even though that measure had nothing to do with trans rights. https://www.youtube.com/embed/QdLtcX1Hzlk
But Ohioans didn’t take the bait. In fact, even though Republicans hastily threw together an emergency vote on Issue 1, voter turnout was reportedly 38 percent higher than all regularly scheduled primary elections since 2016. Issue 1 was defeated by 14 percent.
One ad from Protect Women Ohio claims the amendment will allow kids to undergo “sex change surgery” without their parents’ knowledge or consent. The ad warns: “They’re coming for your parental right.
The actual constitutional amendment that voters will decide on in November doesn’t even mention gender-affirming care for minors. It states: “Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.”
“Opponents have latched on to the ‘but not limited to’ language to say that this could provide a constitutional right to, among other things, gender-affirming care rights. That’s not a legally persuasive argument,” Jonathan Entin, a professor emeritus at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve School of Law, told NBC News.
Wisconsin Republicans did the same thing in a critical state Supreme Court case earlier this year. In April, Judge Janet Protasiewicz prevailed over conservative opponent Dan Kelly, giving liberals a majority on the court for the first time in 15 years.
And despite the fact that the key issues in the race were abortion and redistricting, rather than trans rights, Protasiewicz faced vicious anti-trans attacks throughout her campaign from a far-right extremist group called the American Principles Project. The American Principles Project PAC reportedly spent almost $800,000 on ads and text messages supporting Kelly and accusing Protasiewicz of trying to turn kids transgender.
According to Wisconsin Watch, one text from an unknown number that included an American Principles Project video said Protasiewicz is “endorsed by all the woke activists that are stripping parents of their rights in Wisconsin schools and forcing transgenderism down our throats.”
Others said, “Protasiewicz and her woke allies want to TRANS our children without notifying parents” and have accused the “woke left” of having an “unending thirst to trans our children.”
States that have placed abortion rights on the ballot have found that a majority of voters support protecting those rights by law, even in rural red states like Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana.
Rajee Narinesingh faced struggles throughout her life as a transgender woman, from workplace discrimination to the lasting effects of black market injections that scarred her face and caused chronic infections.
In spite of the roadblocks, the 56-year-old Florida actress and activist has seen growing acceptance since she first came out decades ago.
“If you see older transgender people, it shows the younger community that it’s possible I can have a life. I can live to an older age,” she said. “So I think that’s a very important thing.”
Now, as a wave of new state laws enacted this year limit transgender people’s rights, Narinesingh has new uncertainty about her own future as she ages.
“Every now and then I have like this thought, like, oh my God, if I end up in a nursing home, how are they going to treat me?” Narinesingh said.
Most of the new state laws have focused attention on trans youth, with at least 22 states banning or restricting gender-affirming care for minors.
For many transgender seniors, it’s brought new fears to their plans for retirement and old age. They already face gaps in health care and nursing home facilities properly trained to meet their needs. That’s likely to be compounded by restrictions to transgender health care that have already blocked some adults’ access to treatments in Florida, and sparked concerns the laws will expand to other states.
Transgender adults say they’re worried about finding welcoming spaces to live in their later years.
“I have friends that have retired and they’ve decided to move to retirement communities. And then, little by little, they’ve found that they’re not welcome there,” said Morgan Mayfaire, a transgender man and the executive director of TransSOCIAL, a Florida support and advocacy group.
Discrimination can range from being denied housing to being misgendered and struggling to get nursing homes to acknowledge their visitation rights.
“In order to be welcome there, they have to go into the closet and deny who they are,” Mayfaire said.
Morgan Mayfaire, right, walks with his wife, Ashley, Sunday, at Fairchild Tropical Garden in Miami, on July 23.Lynne Sladky / AP file
About 171,000 of the more than 1.3 million transgender adults in the United States are aged 65 and older, according to numbers compiled by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
The growing population has brought more services such as nursing homes and assisted living centers that are geared toward serving the LGBTQ+ community, though such facilities remain uncommon. They include Stonewall Gardens, a 24-apartment assisted living center that opened in Palm Springs, California in 2015.
The center’s staff are required to go through sensitivity training to help make the center a more welcoming environment for residents, interim executive director Lauren Kabakoff Vincent said. The training is key for making a more accepting environment for transgender residents and making them feel more at home.
“Do you really want to be moving into a place where you have to explain yourself and have to go through it over and over?” Vincent said. “It’s exhausting, and so I think being able to be in a comfortable environment is important.”
SAGE, which advocates on behalf of LGBTQ+ seniors, offers training to nursing homes and other elder care providers. The group trained more than 46,000 staff at 576 organizations around the country in the most recent fiscal year. But the group acknowledges that represents just a fraction of the elder care facilities around the country.
People play games at an LGBTQ+ assisted living facility in Palm Springs, on Aug. 15, 2023.Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP file
“We have a long way to go in terms of getting to the point where nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care providers are prepared for and ready to provide appropriate and welcoming care to trans elders,” said Michael Adams, SAGE’s CEO.
The gap concerns Tiffany Arieagus, 71, an acclaimed drag performer in south Florida who also works in social services for SunServe, an LGBTQ+ nonprofit.
“I just am going on my 71 years on this earth and walking in the civil rights march with my mother at age six and then marching for gay rights,” Arieagus said. “I’ve been blessed enough to see so many changes being made in the world. And then now I’m having to see these wonderful progressions going backwards.”
A handful of states, including Massachusetts and California, have in recent years enacted laws to ensure that LGBTQ+ seniors have equal access to programs for aging populations and requiring training on how to serve that community.
But the push for restrictions on access to health care has brought uncertainty in other states. Florida’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors also includes restrictions that make it difficult, if not impossible, for many adults to get treatment.
SAGE has seen a spike in the number of calls to its hotline following the wave of anti-transgender laws, and Adams said about 40% of them have come from trans seniors primarily in conservative parts of the country worried about the new restrictions.
The limits have prompted some trans adults to leave the state for care, with some turning to crowdfunding appeals for help. But for many trans seniors, such a move isn’t as easy.
“You have the general fear, fear that is leading clinicians being concerned and perhaps stepping away from offering care, fear of trans elders of who is a safe clinician to go to,” Dan Stewart, associate director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Aging Equality Project, said.
Florida’s law has already created obstacles for Andrea Montanez, LGBTQ immigration organizer at Hope CommUnity Center near Orlando. Montanez, 57, said her prescription for hormone therapy was initially denied after the restrictions were signed.
Montanez, who has been speaking out at Florida Medical Board meetings about the impact of the new state law, said she’s worried about what it will be mean as she approaches retirement.
“I hope I have a happy retirement, but health care is a big problem,” Montanez, who was eventually able to get her prescription filled, said.
For Tatiana Williams, 51, the restrictions are stirring painful memories of a time when she and other members of the transgender community had to rely on dangerous and illegal sources for gender-affirming medical care. Now the the executive director of the Transinclusive Group in Wilton Manors, Florida, Williams remembers being hospitalized for a collapsed lung after receiving black market silicone injections for her breasts.
“What we don’t want is the community resorting to going back to that,” Williams said.
Still, older transgender adults say they see hope in how their generation is working with younger trans people to speak out against the wave of the restrictions.
“The community’s going to take care of itself. It’s as simple as that. We’re going to find ways to take care of ourselves and we’re going to survive this,” Mayfaire said. “And as far as trans youth panicking over this, look to your elders.”
A federal appeals court ruled Monday that Alabama can enforce a ban outlawing the use of puberty blockers and hormones to treat transgender children, the second such appellate victory for gender-affirming care restrictions that have been adopted by a growing number of Republican-led states.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a judge’s temporary injunction against enforcing the law. The judge has scheduled trial for April 2 on whether to permanently block the law.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall called the ruling a “significant victory for our country, for children, and for common sense.”
“The Eleventh Circuit reinforced that the State has the authority to safeguard the physical and psychological wellbeing of minors,” Marshall said.
Steve Marshall, Alabama’s attorney general, speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson on March 24, 2022.Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images
In lifting the injunction, the judges wrote that states have “a compelling interest in protecting children from drugs, particularly those for which there is uncertainty regarding benefits, recent surges in use, and irreversible effects.”
The decision leaves families of transgender children, who had been receiving treatment, scrambling for care. The injunction will remain in place until the court issues the mandate, which could take several days. But once it is officially lifted, the attorney general’s office will be able to enforce the ban, which threatens doctors with prison time.
Advocacy groups representing families who challenged the Alabama law vowed to continue the fight, saying “parents, not the government, are best situated to make these medical decisions for their children.”
“Our clients are devastated by this decision, which leaves them vulnerable to what the district court—after hearing several days of testimony from parents, doctors, and experts—found to be irreparable harm as a result of losing the medical care they have been receiving and that has enabled them to thrive,” said a joint statement from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, and the Human Rights Campaign.
Major medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose the bans and experts say treatments are safe if properly administered.
Puberty blockers are fully reversible prescription medication that pause sexual maturation, typically given in injections or skin implants. Hormone treatments can prompt sexual development, including changes in appearance.
Dr. Morissa Ladinsky, a Birmingham pediatrician, said in a statement Monday that she is hopeful “today’s decision is just a temporary setback.”
“As a doctor who has treated hundreds of transgender adolescents, I know firsthand the challenges these young people and their families face and the benefits these treatments provide to youth who need them. This is safe, effective, and established medical care. There is no valid reason to ban this care,” Ladinsky said.
The ruling follows a string of decisions in recent weeks against similar bans. A federal judge in June struck down a similar law in Arkansas, the first state to enact such a ban. At least 20 states enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for minors.
Opponents of youth transgender medical treatment say there’s no solid proof of purported benefits, cite widely discredited research and say children shouldn’t make life-altering decisions they might regret.
Bans have also been temporarily blocked by federal judges in Florida, Indiana, and Kentucky. A federal appeals court has allowed Tennessee’s ban, which had been blocked by a federal judge, to take effect.
The ruling applies to only the Alabama ban, but comes as most of the state bans are being challenged in court.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act into law in 2022, making it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison for doctors to treat people under 19 with puberty blockers or hormones to help affirm their gender identity.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey delivers her State of the State address in Montgomery on March 7, 2023.Julie Bennett / AP file
Four families with transgender children ranging in ages 12 to 17 challenged the Alabama law as an unconstitutional violation of equal protection and free speech rights, as well as an intrusion into family medical decisions. The U.S. Department of Justice joined their lawsuit, seeking to overturn the law.
U.S. District Judge Liles Burke, who was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump in 2017, ruled when issuing the preliminary injunction that Alabama had produced no credible evidence to show that transitioning medications are “experimental.”
Alabama then appealed to the 11th Circuit.
Burke allowed two other parts of the law to take effect. One bans gender-affirming surgeries for transgender minors, which doctors had testified are not done on minors in Alabama. The other requires counselors and other school officials to tell parents if a minor discloses that they think they are transgender.
More GOP states are poised to enact similar bans on gender-affirming care for minors. Democratic governors in Louisiana and North Carolina vetoed bans last month, but both were overridden by Republican-led legislatures.
A federal judge has blocked the state of Georgia from enforcing part of a new law that bans doctors from starting hormone therapy for transgender people under the age of 18.
In a ruling issued Sunday, U.S. District Judge Sarah Geraghty granted a preliminary injunction sought by several transgender children, parents and a community organization in a lawsuit challenging the ban.
“The imminent risks of irreparable harm to Plaintiffs flowing from the ban — including risks of depression, anxiety, disordered eating, self-harm, and suicidal ideation — outweigh any harm the State will experience from the injunction,” the judge wrote.
An email to a spokeswoman for the state attorney general’s office was not immediately returned. Geraghty said her ruling will block enforcement of the ban on hormone replacement therapy until a further court order or a trial.
But the ruling allows part of the law, which took effect on July 1, to remain in place. It bars any new patients under 18 from starting hormone therapy and bans most gender-affirming surgeries for transgender people under 18.
Geraghty’s ruling was an “incredible victory for Georgia families,” attorneys for the plaintiffs said in a statement. The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and the law firm O’Melveny & Myers are representing the plaintiffs.
“This law unapologetically targets transgender minors and denies them essential health care,” they said. “The ruling restores parents’ rights to make medical decisions that are in their child’s best interest, including hormone therapy for their transgender children when needed for them to thrive and be healthy.”
At least 22 states have now enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and most of those states face lawsuits. A federal judge struck down Arkansas’ ban as unconstitutional, and federal judges have temporarily blocked bans in Alabama and Indiana as well.
The plaintiffs in the Georgia lawsuit did not ask to immediately block the surgery ban, which remains in effect.
Doctors typically guide kids toward therapy or voice coaching long before medical intervention.
At that point, puberty blockers and other hormone treatments are far more common than surgery. They have been available in the U.S. for more than a decade and are standard treatments backed by major doctors’ organizations including the American Medical Association.
During two days of hearings earlier this month, Geraghty heard conflicting testimony about the safety and benefits of hormone therapy to treat adolescents with gender dysphoria — the distress felt when people’s assigned sex at birth does not match their gender identity.
Experts for the families said the benefits of gender-affirming care for adolescents are well-established and profound. State government experts raised concerns about the risks of hormone treatment and the quality of studies establishing its effectiveness.
In her ruling, Geraghty said witnesses for state health officials set a very high bar for evidence of hormone therapy’s benefit and a low bar for evidence of its risks. She noted that experts agreed that prolonged use of puberty blockers was harmful to a person’s health and inadvisable.
For the transgender children in the suit, “time is of the essence,” she wrote, and SB 140 could cause them to suffer heightened gender dysphoria and unwanted and irreversible puberty.
The victim killed in a Friday shooting at a punk show in Minnesota has been identified. A gunman opened fire into a backyard venue, killing August Golden and striking six others.
Minneapolis police are looking for two people who fled the area.
It all happened at an outdoor music show in the backyard and garage of Nudieland, a residential performance space south of Minneapolis shortly after 10 p.m.
“We believe one of the persons was being targeted by a shooter,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference on Saturday. “We know two suspects ran from the scene. I can’t confirm there were two shooters, though.”
The backyard punk show was underway on Friday as Quinn McClurg snapped pictures of her joyful friends when a gunman targeted the LGBTQ+ attendees in a deadly mass shooting.
As a poet and journalist attending the University of Minnesota who moved to Minneapolis in 2021, McClurg was quickly welcomed into DIY shows like Nudieland, Reckon reports.
“DIY shows are one of the only regularly safe places for trans folks, queer folks, punks, and everybody to get together and socialize,” the 21-year-old transgender woman said. “Because everybody you know and love is there. People you’ve worked in the encampments with, people you’ve done protests with—everybody’s there.”
Nudieland was formed two years ago as an extension of its sister venue, Disgraceland. In addition to being a venue, Nudieland is also home to many of its punk patrons who reside in the house.
One of the residents, who is trans, told Reckon, “This is not a unique space. So many of the bunkhouses I started going to, as young as 16, in and around Southside [Minneapolis], were the same way: there was no striving; we were just in it together, whoever walked in. We’ve always been freaks.”
On the night of the shooting, there was a celebration of the new album release of one of the local bands, Texture Freq.
McClurg and Aaron Diveley, who is also transgender, are among the survivors of that night who have been supporting one another to figure out what happened. It appears that two men followed two queer women at the show.
MPR News posted an Instagram photo with a comment from a user who said they were at the event, “They were trying to flirt with me and my friend—who both identify as lesbians—and we told them we weren’t interested and not to touch us. They got upset and eventually walked off, and less than a minute after [they] started firing.”
“This was a hate crime,” Diveley said.
Several GoFundMe sites have been set up to support the victims of the attack.
“Our hearts are saddened this week as we absorb the impact of yet another hateful, violent attack on our queer/trans community with the shooting at Nudieland,” said Jeremy Hanson Willis, CEO of Minnesota LGBTQ+ health group Rainbow Health, in a statement. “We share the feelings of loss and fear, and we send our love to those affected by this senseless act.”
