Good news courtesy of The Associated Press:
Ohio’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors is unconstitutional and must be permanently blocked from being enforced, a three-judge panel of appellate judges ruled Tuesday. The law also banned trans women and girls from participating in female sports. The state’s Republican attorney general vowed an immediate appeal.
On Tuesday, the state’s 10th District Court of Appeals reversed a decision made last summer to allow the law to go into effect after a judge found it “reasonably limits parents’ rights.” The law bans counseling, gender-affirming surgery and hormone therapy for minors, unless they are already receiving such therapies and a doctor deems it risky to stop.
The litigation was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Ohio and the global law firm Goodwin, who argued the law not only denies health care to transgender children and teens, but specifically discriminates against them accessing it.
The court agreed and cited a number of flaws in the lower court’s reasoning. Judge Carly Edelstein wrote in the ruling that the Ohio law does not outlaw identical drugs when they’re used for other reasons, only when they’re used for gender transitioning, which makes it discriminatory. She also said that a prescription ban is not a reasonable exercise of the state’s police power when it is weighed against the rights of parents to care for their children.
Addressing proponents’ arguments that minors are not in a position to understand the long-term impacts such procedures could have on their lives, the judge said that, while they may not be, their parents are. “Thus, in considering whether the H.B. 68 ban is reasonable, it is necessary to keep in mind that the law recognizes the maturity, experience, and capacity of parents to make difficult judgments and act in their children’s best interest,” she wrote.
The irony of this ruling is how it's partly based on the argument that it is parents who should decide what's best for their children when it comes to healthcare. Parental rights are an argument generally used by conservative and right-wing groups as a way to undermine the rights of LGBTQ students.
Erin Reed has a very thorough view of the ruling.
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