'Generational win': Alabama's ban on sex-change surgeries, puberty blockers for kids defeats ACLU lawsuit
Litigation over an Alabama law prohibiting minors from obtaining life-altering sex-change surgeries and hormone drugs has come to an end in what one top elected official in the state is describing as a "generational win."
In a joint stipulation of dismissal filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama's Northern Division on Thursday, the plaintiffs in a case challenging Alabama's ban on gender transition surgeries for minors agreed to dismiss their lawsuit "without costs or fees to any party."
The office of Alabama's Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall elaborated on the implications of this development and the history of the litigation surrounding the law in a statement published Thursday.
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"Three years ago, multiple sets of plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU, [Southern Poverty Law Center] and some of the nation's largest law firms, filed suit against Alabama to challenge our law protecting vulnerable kids from life-altering sex change procedures," Marshall said. "We fought back. We defeated a preliminary injunction and conducted court-ordered discovery into the so-called' standards of care' that these groups claimed were evidence-based."
Marshall said that what his office discovered was "devastating to the plaintiffs' challenge: a medical, legal, and political scandal that will be studied for decades." He maintained, "Given the evidence we uncovered, it is no surprise the plaintiffs abandoned their challenge."
"We uncovered the truth. We exposed the scandal. We won. Alabama led the way, and now all families are safer for it," he added. "This victory is not just for Alabama. This is a generational win for children, families, and for reality itself. Alabama refused to be bullied. Now, the rest of the country is seeing the truth. We are proud to lead that effort."
In a statement shared with media, Scott McCoy, deputy legal director of inclusion and anti-extremism litigation at the far-left civil rights group SPLC, praised "the courage of these plaintiffs" and vowed to "continue fighting to ensure families across the country have the freedom to get their transgender children the proven medical care that enables them to thrive."
"The shutting down of medical care in Alabama has forced our plaintiffs and other Alabama families to make heart wrenching decisions that no family should ever have to make, and they are each making the decisions they need to make that are right for them," McCoy said.
The conclusion of the litigation against the Alabama law comes less than two months after the federal government under the Trump administration pulled out of the lawsuit, which the Biden administration had joined in an attempt to defeat the legislation in court.
As Marshall alluded to in his statement, the discovery process associated with the lawsuit resulted in his office finding that the "standards of care" used by LGBT advocacy groups that push for the performance of life-altering procedures on trans-identified youth were not "evidence-based" despite consistent assertions to the contrary.
Marshall's office states that the discovery exposed that "key medical organizations misled parents, promoted unproven treatments as settled science, and ignored growing international concern over the use of sex-change procedures to treat gender dysphoria in minors."
The attorney general outlined his findings in a friend-of-the-court brief issued in support of a Tennessee law banning so-called gender transition procedures for minors that is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. He highlighted how the eighth version of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health's Standards of Care was compiled based on the advice of "social justice lawyers [they] spoke with" as opposed to a scientific review of the effects of gender transition procedures on minors.
According to the brief, WPATH determined that "evidence-based review reveals little or no evidence and puts us in an untenable position in terms of affecting policy or winning lawsuits."
Alabama was one of the first states to enact a law banning trans-identified youth from obtaining puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones and body-mutilating surgeries for the purpose of changing genders. Shortly after the law's passage in 2022, a federal judge put the portion of the law banning puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on hold while upholding the prohibition on gender transition surgeries.
Other states that have enacted laws banning some or all forms of gender transition procedures for minors due to concerns about their long-term impacts are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
The American College of Pediatricians has warned that puberty blockers can cause "osteoporosis, mood disorders, seizures, cognitive impairment and, when combined with cross-sex hormones, sterility." Meanwhile, the ACP lists possible side effects of cross-sex hormones as "an increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, blood clots and cancers across their lifespan."
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
