On Tuesday, the ACLU of Ohio, the law firm Goodwin, and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging House Bill 68, Ohio’s legislation that forbids transgender minors from receiving gender-affirming medical care and prohibits transgender girls from participating in girls ‘ and women’s sports.
The issue especially asks the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas to overturn the controversial law known as the SAFE Act for Save Adolescents from Experimentation before it’s scheduled to go into effect on April 24, 2024. It is intended to apply to both medical treatment constraints and the SAFE Act.
According to the policy, physicians who provide gender-affirming care to trans youths may be” subject to discipline by the appropriate specialist licensing board.” A grandfather clause that allows trans people who are currently receiving attention to continue doing so is included in the rules along with instances for such care for non-transgender children.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two people who say their kids are at risk of losing access to” important, medically important” care. They claim that the law violates the Expected Course of Law delivery and four sections of the Ohio Constitution, including the Equal Protection Clause, which states that no rules” may prevent the buy or sale of Health Care or health insurance” and that no law” may prevent the purchase or sale of Health Care or health insurance.”
” These personal, private medical decisions should remain between families and doctors, they do n’t belong to politicians”, said Freda Levenson, Legal Director at the ACLU of Ohio, in a statement regarding the lawsuit. We will fight in court to prevent the government from enforcing laws that make trans people and their parents access critically needed, life-saving healthcare.
Protesters advocating for transgender rights and healthcare stand outside of the Ohio Statehouse, on Jan. 24, 2024, in Columbus, Ohio.
Patrick Orsagos/AP, FILE
Unidentified due to her age, one of the children represented in the lawsuit claimed that puberty blockers helped ease her “fear and anxiety about her body changing in ways inconsistent with her gender, which significantly improved her mental health and alleviated her gender dysphoria.” Her family claims that if HB 68 goes into effect, her health is being harmed if not having access to estrogen hormone therapy when the time comes, “if that is what she wants and her parents agree.”
The Republican-controlled Ohio House and Senate in January overrode Republican governor’s veto of the bill. Mike DeWine.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine speaks during an event in Columbus, Ohio, on March 18, 2024.
Paul Vernon/AP
DeWine had expressed concerns about judicial challenges the state would encounter if the law were to be passed. A federal judge upheld a law in Arkansas, and similar laws were blocked while the cases were being tried in other states like Texas and Georgia.
DeWine also expressed concern about the potential effects of outlawing transgender medical care on the underprivileged, underserved transgender population.
DeWine made remarks following his veto,” Many parents have told me that their child would be dead today if they had n’t received the treatment they had received from a Cincinnati children’s hospital.” ” I have also been told, by those that are now grown adults, that but for this care, they would have taken their lives when they were teenagers”.
Often because of gender- related discrimination and gender dysphoria, transgender youth are more likely to experience anxiety, depressed mood, and suicidal ideation and attempts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, hormone therapy can enhance the mental well-being of transgender teenagers and adolescents.
These are gut-wrenching decisions that parents should make, DeWine said. These decisions should also be made by doctors who are advising them. These parents have watched their child go through painful experiences and have real concerns that their child might not live.
Republican Rep. Gary Click, a sponsor of HB 68, criticized the ACLU’s lawsuit.
” Gender- affirming care is a slogan, not science”, Click said Tuesday in response to the ACLU filing. Without parental consent, sex changes for children and counseling are not civil rights that our constitution includes. I have complete faith in the authority of Ohio Attorney General David Yost to defend the SAFE Act.
Physicians who provide gender-affirming care spoke with ABC News. Not every patient will receive any or all of the options for gender-affirming medical care, according to them, because their families, their doctors, and they collaborate to create an individualized approach to care. Parents are a part of the conversation, they say.
DeWine argued in his veto that “none of the families I spoke to talked about having children under the age of 18” or having sex changes. Reversible puberty blockers and less-reversible hormone therapy would be affected by the ban passed as part of HB 68.
” That’s not where they were going in the discussion. And I think that’s, frankly, a fallacy that’s out there that, you know, this goes right to surgery”, said DeWine. ” It just does n’t. All the children’s hospitals say that we do n’t do surgeries”.
Other HB 68 supporters claim that more research is needed to examine the issue of gender-affirming care. The bill does not include this research.
” If you do n’t know if something you’re doing is going to hurt someone 10, 15, 20 years down the road – or maybe even one year down the road – do n’t do it”, GOP state Sen. Terry Johnson, who is a retired physician, said in a Dec. 13 debate on the bill. The medical evidence does not exist to support what we are doing in this country.
Critics of these restrictions say they will harm transgender youth, a small population that already disproportionately faces discrimination, violence, and bullying.
More than 20 major national medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, have referred to gender-affirming care as safe and effective. According to the AMA, this care may be necessary in order to improve transgender people’s physical and mental health.
Ohio is one of at least 23 states that has passed legislation that prohibits gender-affirming access to transgender health care.
