Missouri’s ban on transgender care for minors faces lawsuit from ACLU, Lambda Legal

The ACLU of Missouri and the national LGBTQ civil rights law firm Lambda Legal sued Tuesday to stop Missouri’s new restrictions on gender-affirming care for transgender youth from going into effect next month.

The state lawsuit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court, seeks to prevent implementation of SB 49, which the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed and Gov. Mike Parson signed into law this spring. The suit is being brought on behalf of three families of trans youth, medical providers and national LGBTQ advocacy organizations.

The law, which is set to take effect on Aug. 28, bans gender transition surgeries on minors and imposes a three-year moratorium on hormone therapy and puberty blockers unless the patients are already receiving the medications.

The ban is part of a nationwide push to regulate the lives of transgender people, stoking fear in Missouri’s transgender community and prompting some to consider leaving the state.

“SB 49 is the latest chapter in Missouri’s relentless attacks on transgender people, and the stories of the families challenging the law demonstrate the immense, devastating harm it is already inflicting on their lives,” Nora Huppert, a staff attorney at Lambda Legal, said in a statement.

“SB 49 would deny adolescent transgender Missourians access to evidence-based treatment supported by the overwhelming medical consensus. This law is not just harmful and cruel; it is life-threatening.”

The lawsuit alleges SB 49 violates the Missouri Constitution by discriminating against trans patients on the basis of sex and their trans status, and deprives parents of a fundamental right to seek medical care for their children. The new law also forces medical providers to choose between abandoning their patients or keeping their medical licenses, according to the suit.

Among the plaintiffs is the family of C.J., a 13-year-old trans boy who has expressed a male gender identity since kindergarten. C.J. is on puberty blockers and his family intends to initiate hormone therapy when he is 14. But the law, if it goes into effect, will prevent him from receiving hormones until he turns 18.

If that happens, C.J. “will be devastated, and his mental health will be affected ‘terribly,’” the lawsuit says.

The law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner is also representing plaintiffs in the suit, in addition to the ACLU of Missouri and Lambda Legal.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, will be tasked with defending the law in court. Bailey earlier this year attempted to severely restrict gender-affirming care by issuing a regulation, leading even some Republicans to question its legality. He abandoned that effort, however, after lawmakers approved restrictions.

He often framed the rule as necessary to protect children — an approach he is likely to take in defending SB 49 — and rolled out the proposal after a former employee at Washington University in St. Louis’ transgender clinic at St. Louis Children’s Hospital alleged the center was harming patients. The university’s internal report found the allegations to be unfounded.

Bailey said in a statement Tuesday that there are “zero FDA approvals of puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria in children. We’re not going to let left-wing ideologues experiment on children here in the state of Missouri.”

Parson, who signed the law during Pride month in June, said at the time that while he supports “everyone’s right to his or her own pursuit of happiness; however, we must protect children from making life-altering decisions that they could come to regret in adulthood once they have physically and emotionally matured.”

But Gillian Wilcox, deputy director of litigation at the ACLU of Missouri, said in a statement that the law targets vulnerable populations.

“On its face, the law enshrines discriminatory practices in our health care system by specifically denying transgender Missourians under the age of eighteen access to evidence-based gender-affirming medical care while stripping parents of their fundamental right to make medical decisions for their children,” Wilcox said.

The Star’s Kacen Bayless contributed reporting