Judge blocks portion of Georgia law, allowing some transgender hormone treatments for minors

A federal judge in Georgia Aug. 20 temporarily blocked part of a state law banning certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender while a challenge to that law plays out in court.

The Georgia law, Senate Bill 140, prohibits doctors in the state from providing some hormonal or surgical gender-transition treatments to anyone under 18, with a few exceptions, such as for those who are already in the midst of such treatments. The Georgia law does, however, permit doctors to prescribe puberty-blocking medications to minors, unlike some similar laws in other states.

The preliminary injunction issued by the judge blocked enforcement of the ban on other types of hormonal treatments for minors, permitting such treatments to take place during litigation. The injunction did not lift the ban on gender transition surgery for minors, meaning such surgeries remain prohibited in the state.

A lawsuit filed in June by the families of four children who identify as transgender asked the federal court in Georgia to block the law from taking effect. Counsel for the plaintiffs, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, praised the judge in a statement for issuing the preliminary injunction, calling it “an incredible victory for Georgia families.”

“We are gratified that the Court carefully considered the evidence and appropriately applied the law in halting SB 140,” the statement said. “This law unapologetically targets transgender minors and denies them essential health care. 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.”

In guidance on health care policy and practices released March 20, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine opposed interventions that “involve the use of surgical or chemical techniques that aim to exchange the sex characteristics of a patient’s body for those of the opposite sex or for simulations thereof.”

“Any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person,” the document states.

Several Catholic dioceses have begun forming pastoral approaches to gender dysphoria. In January, the Diocese of Des Moines, Iowa, issued guidance and policies on ministering to people experiencing gender dysphoria, calling for coherence with the church’s teaching on the inseparability of gender from biological sex while emphasizing pastoral compassion for children and adults wrestling with conflict between their sex and gender.

A 2022 study by the UCLA Williams Institute found approximately 1.6 million people in the U.S. age 13 and older identify as transgender.

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