The Supreme Court on Monday let an Idaho law blocking gender transition medicine for minors to broadly take effect, overturning the decisions of lower federal courts.
The justices allowed the Republican-backed law to take effect until the court has had the opportunity to hear oral arguments and make an official judgment in the case, which has not been scheduled. The three liberal justices dissented.
The court’s decision allows the state to enforce the ban in all circumstances except in the cases of the two plaintiffs who challenged the law, minors identified as Pam Poe and Jane Doe. Although their identities are unknown, it has been reported that both minors are receiving estrogen and one is receiving puberty blockers.
Idaho’s law prohibits more than 20 types of gender transition treatments, including puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and surgeries such as vaginoplasty or mastectomy.
“The act only regulates the experimental, dangerous and ineffective use of these procedures to try to resolve gender dysphoria by making a child’s body look more like the opposite sex,” the state argued in court documents.
Doctors and pharmacists convicted of violating the law can face up to 10 years in prison.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the law, HB 71, following its passage in May 2023. In January, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s preliminary injunction blocking the enforcement of the law.
Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador asked the Supreme Court to consider the broadness of the injunction from the two lower courts rather than the constitutional issues or the merits of the case.
Labrador also referred to the plaintiffs in court documents as “adolescent boys who have gender dysphoria.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion for the Supreme Court, said the decision of both lower courts to issue broad-sweeping emergency injunctions is to blame for making the case an issue of national importance.
“A rising number of universal injunctions virtually guarantees that a rising number of ‘high-profile’ cases will find their way to this Court,” argued Gorsuch, saying the district court’s injunction “effectively transformed a limited dispute between a small number of parties focused on one feature of a law into a far more consequential referendum on the law’s every provision.”
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Idaho is one of 23 states with policies that restrict gender-transition medical treatments for minors, although many cases related to the laws are working their way through the courts.
The Supreme Court is anticipated to announce as soon as this month whether it will consider the Biden administration’s challenge to a similar law in Tennessee that prevents healthcare professionals from providing gender transition medicine to minors.
