Supreme Court allows Idaho to impose felony ban on gender-affirming care for minors

The Supreme Court on Monday granted a request from Idaho’s attorney general to lift a lower court’s temporary injunction that prevented the state from enforcing its criminal ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

The justices granted Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s (R) request to restrict a December district court order that blocked the state’s ban in its entirety, allowing the law to be applied against individuals other than the two transgender teenagers who challenged her in court.

Last year, Idaho became the second state, after Alabama, to make providing gender-affirming health care to minors a crime, punishable by up to a decade in prison and $5,000 in fines.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill blocked the Idaho law, known as the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, in December. He wrote in her order that gender-affirming medical care “is safe, effective and medically necessary for some adolescents” when it is provided according to guidelines established by organizations such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the Endocrine Society.

Labrador appealed Winmill’s decision in January, but a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the ruling in a one-sentence ruling. The same three-judge panel denied Labrador’s second appeal for the full 9th ​​Circuit to reconsider the injunction.

In February, Labrador asked the Supreme Court to take emergency action allowing Idaho to enforce the law, arguing that district courts cannot prevent states from enforcing laws against individuals who are not directly involved in litigation.

The Supreme Court said Monday it agreed.

“Normally, injunctions such as these cannot go beyond what is necessary to provide interim relief to the parties. In this case, however, the district court went much further, prohibiting a State from enforcing any aspect of its duly enacted law against any person,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote on Monday.

The court’s three liberal justices disagreed, arguing that the law should have remained blocked entirely.

Labrador, in an emailed statement, did not respond explicitly to Monday’s ruling but said the state “has a duty to protect and support all children.”

“I have witnessed firsthand the devastating consequences of medications and procedures used on children with gender dysphoria,” he said. “And it’s a preventable tragedy.”

Gender-affirming health care for transgender minors and adults is considered medically necessary and often life-saving by major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and ACLU of Idaho, which represents the plaintiffs, called Monday’s ruling “a terrible outcome for transgender youth and their families across the state.”

“Today’s decision allows the State to terminate the care that thousands of families depend on, while at the same time sowing further confusion and disruption,” the groups said in a statement. “However, today’s outcome only makes us even more determined to fully defeat this law in the courts, making Idaho a safer state in which to raise all families.”