A state ban on gender-affirming health care has been challenged by five trans youths in Louisiana, sparking a legal battle over legislation that liberal lawmakers supported last year.
Act 466, which went into effect on January 1 and discriminates against transgender people, creates obstacles for families trying to provide their youngsters with the best medical care, and prevents specialists from properly performing their duties, the students and their families claimed on Monday in New Orleans state court.
One of the defendants, identified in court papers as Max Moe, said in a statement, “This health care has allowed me to be happy, healthy, and my real true
self, the teenager I know I am.” “I worry about how my mental health may deteriorate and I’m terrified of what the health care restrictions will do.”
The federal LGBTQ+ freedom business Lambda Legal, the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law & Policy Innovation, and Louisiana law firm Schonekas, Evans, McGoey, McEachin all represent the plaintiffs.
The petition aims to expand upon a growing body of court cases where courts have sided with plaintiffs in opposition to other states with comparable legal frameworks.
The Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, which is named as a defendant in the issue, did not respond to an email sent on Monday by staffers or one board member. Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican who took office on Monday, was also named as a defendant. She was not reachable right away.
In the past two years, laws aimed at gender-affirming treatment have been passed in more than a few U.S. states with Republican-controlled legislatures.
However, Reuters reported that by next summer, district judges in at least six of those states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee—had repealed those rules. Many of those court decisions found that the legislation violated the 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection under the Constitution. Appellate courts have since upheld the laws in some of those states, demonstrating the rapidly changing legal environment surrounding the health care bans, though a higher court may also overturn them.
For young people whose gender identity “is inconsistent with the child’s sex,” Louisiana law forbids gender-altering surgical procedures, hormone treatments, and puberty blockers. According to the plaintiffs, this language specifically targets transgender people.
Transgender minors are permitted to continue receiving counseling under the law.
Last year, Act 466 was a flashpoint in the legislative session, bringing lawmakers back to Baton Rouge in July for another specific veto-override session after that. Democratic John Bel Edwards used his veto pen to oppose the proposal.
At the time, now-retired state senator Fred Mills, R-Parks infuriated GOP group protesters by defying his fellow Republicans and voting to destroy the bill in
the Senate Health and Welfare Committee. That committee was presided over by Mills, who was near the end of his term, at the time.
Legislators broke the rules of parliamentary decorum by reviving the bill, sending it to a different committee, and finally passing it in the full Senate after receiving groundswell support for it from organizations advocating traditional family values.
A few weeks afterward, Edwards vetoed the bill, claiming that it was “blatantly flawed on so many levels” in a scathing six-page text.
The former governor wrote, “This act is called the ‘Stop Harming our Kids Act,’ which is ironic because this is exactly what it does.”
The bill was passed after the Republican-supermajority House and Senate overrode Edwards’ veto.
On two different anti-LGBT+ bills, one that sought to limit students’ use of alternative pronouns and the other that forbade discussion of sex and sexuality entirely in classrooms, lawmakers in the House attempted to override Edwards. However, the house did not receive the two-thirds of the vote required to override those vetoes.
State Rep. Gabe Firment, a Pollock Republican who sponsored the gender-affirming care bill, said he expected the authorities to support his act in an interview on Monday.
According to Firment, the lawsuit challenging HB648 (Act 466) was completely anticipated because similar legislation to protect children has already been filed in a number of other states. Related laws passed in Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee have just been upheld by appellate courts, which is very encouraging.
