A federal judge ruled Wednesday that part of a new Tennessee law banning transgender procedures on minors cannot be enforced until a full trial on a lawsuit takes place in early 2024.
U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson placed a temporary injunction against parts of the law, including the ban on giving children cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers, The Daily Wire reports.
The law, known as SB1, prohibits minors from receiving puberty blockers, hormone therapies or surgical procedures, and was set to take effect on July 1.
The Tennessee General Assembly website describes SB1 as a law which “prohibits a healthcare provider from performing on a minor or administering to a minor a medical procedure if the performance or administration of the procedure is for the purpose of enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”
In addition to preventing minors from receiving puberty blockers, the law also bans double mastectomies on girls claiming to be males, and genital procedures.
Richardson’s injunction did not block the portion of the law banning double mastectomies and genital surgeries, but only the ban on giving children cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers.
“If Tennessee wishes to regulate access to certain medical procedures, it must do so in a manner that does not infringe on the rights conferred by the United States Constitution, which is of course supreme to all other laws of the land,” Richardson wrote in his ruling. “With regard to SB1, Tennessee has likely failed to do just this.”
State Rep. William Lamberth, who sponsored the SB1 companion bill in the Tennessee House of Representatives, lamented the judge’s ruling.
“It is a sad day in Tennessee when, in place of protecting innocent children, our courts normalize a dangerous ideology that promotes the abuse and chemical castration of healthy young people,” Lamberth said on Twitter.
In February, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh testified before the Tennessee House Committee in support of the bill and said that “we should be able to agree that it is never okay to chemically castrate, sterilize, butcher, or mutilate a child.”
Following Richardson’s ruling, Walsh said on Twitter that it was “not a surprise that an activist judge has once again stepped in to defend child butchery.”
The ruling came as a result of a lawsuit filed by Tennessee families and doctors against the state of Tennessee in response to the passage of SB1. The plaintiffs, including a Memphis-based physician who provides “gender-affirming care,” argue that the law would prevent children from receiving needed medical care.
A federal judge also blocked portions of a Kentucky law aimed at protecting children from transgender medical intervention on Wednesday.
“This is a win, but it is only the first step,” an ACLU legal director said regarding the ruling in Kentucky. “We’re prepared to fight for families’ right to make their own private medical decisions in court.”
Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky Attorney General, called the judge’s ruling a trampling of “the right of the [Kentucky] General Assembly to make public policy.”
“There is nothing ‘affirming’ about this dangerous approach to mental health, and my office will continue to do everything in our power to defend this law passed by our elected representatives,” Cameron said.
In Indiana, a Trump-appointed federal judge blocked portions of the state’s law prohibiting minors from receiving treatments such as puberty blocking medication, hormone therapy and surgery intended to help “transition” genders.
Judges made similar rulings in Florida and Arkansas.
