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

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

The justices granted Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s (R) request to narrow a December district court order blocking the state’s ban in its entirety, allowing the law to be enforced against individuals other than the two transgender teenagers challenging it in court. 

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

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill blocked Idaho’s law, known as the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, in December. He wrote in his order that gender-affirming medical care “is safe, effective, and medically necessary for some adolescents” when it is provided in accordance with guidelines set 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 for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied it in a one-sentence order. 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 that are not directly involved in litigation. 

The Supreme Court on Monday said it agreed. 

“Ordinarily, injunctions like these may go no further than 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 anyone,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote Monday. 

The court’s three liberal justices dissented, arguing the law should have remained blocked in full. 

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

“I’ve witnessed firsthand the devastating consequences of drugs 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 lifesaving by major medical organizations including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Idaho, which are representing the plaintiffs, called Monday’s ruling “an awful result for transgender youth and their families across the state.” 

“Today’s ruling allows the state to shut down the care that thousands of families rely on while sowing further confusion and disruption,” the groups said in a statement. “Nonetheless, today’s result only leaves us all the more determined to defeat this law in the courts entirely, making Idaho a safer state to raise every family.”