Sept. 6 (UPI) — Georgia may reinstate its ban on transgender minors receiving hormone therapy, a federal judge has ruled, vacating her previous hold on the state law by citing a recent decision in Alabama.
Last month, Judge Sarah Geraghty had sided with four Georgia families and TransParent USA and placed a preliminary injection against provisions of Senate Bill 140, which bans those under the age of 18 from undergoing sex reassignment surgeries and new patients after July 1 from undergoing hormone replacement therapies.
Hormone blockers can still be administered under the law.
Geraghty had ruled that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the argument that the law’s provision that prohibits hormone replacement therapy violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection and Due Process clauses.
However, a day after she issued the ruling, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a lower court’s injunction placed on a similar Alabama state law by stating it had abused its discretion as the plaintiffs have not proved that there is a constitutional right to treat one’s child with transition medications that are subject to medically accepted standards.
Georgia then asked Geraghty to vacate her injunction on S.B. 140 in light of the Alabama decision, and on Tuesday, she instead issued a stay on her previous ruling pending a decision in the other case.
In her ruling Tuesday, Geraghty said it was “undisputed” that her preliminary injunction rests on legal grounds that were “squarely rejected” by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and that it cannot stand on the bases she had previously articulated.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed S.B. 140 into law March 23, despite every major U.S. medical organization — including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics — endorsing gender-affirming care for minors.
Kemp signed the law amid a Republican push nationwide seeking to restrict the rights or transgender people, especially children, with more than 20 states having banned minors from medical and surgical gender-affirming care.
