U.S. Supreme Court ruling keeps gender-affirming care ban in place for Kentucky transgender youth
Republished from Queer Kentucky
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday to uphold another state’s ban on gender-affirming health care for transgender youth — meaning Kentucky’s kids and teens who identify outside of their assigned sex at birth will not be able to access health care most major medical associations consider to be critical.
The nation’s top court ruled 6-3 to allow Tennessee’s law banning access to care such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy treatments for transgender minors to remain in effect.
Kentucky lawmakers passed a similar law in 2023’s Senate Bill 150, then considered the nation’s worst anti-trans piece of legislation in a year full of bills aimed at the LGBTQ+ community. Legal challenges over SB 150 got lumped into Tennessee’s Supreme Court fight since they were so similar and in the same court system.
Trans youth in the Bluegrass State have been prohibited from accessing such care for two years, and Kentucky’s GOP-dominated legislature has since passed additional laws aimed at reducing LGBTQ+ rights and health care access.
After SB 150 passed in the spring of 2023, groups including the ACLU of Kentucky stepped in to challenge parts of the law in court. Their lawsuit, filed on behalf of multiple impacted Kentucky kids and teens and their families, focused just on the parts of the law aimed at non-surgical forms of gender-affirming care. Parts of SB 150 prohibiting gender-affirming surgeries weren’t contested.
A legal saga ensued. Initially, a judge ruled that trans youth should be able to access needed health care, reversing the law. But then the same judge reversed their thinking, allowing Kentucky’s ban on care to stay in effect.
And it has remained in effect as the lawsuit worked its way through the court system. It eventually got combined with a similar lawsuit coming out of Tennessee, which is the case that officially got tried in front of the Supreme Court last December and ruled on Wednesday.
This story will be updated.
The post U.S. Supreme Court ruling keeps gender-affirming care ban in place for Kentucky transgender youth appeared first on Queer Kentucky.
Queer Kentucky is a diverse LGBTQ+ run non-profit based in Kentucky working to bolster and enhance Queer culture and health through storytelling, education and action.
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