The Department of Justice is challenging the law in Alabama, which makes it a crime to administer gender-based health care to minors

“This lawsuit challenges a state statute that denies children the necessary medical care based solely on who they are,” the department’s complaint said.

The complaint, filed on Friday, alleges that “the ban on the new Serious Crime Act for providing certain medically necessary care to transgender minors violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

The justice ministry is asking the court to issue an immediate order to block the law, which is due to take effect on May 8th.

Bill 184 in the Alabama Senate, which Republican Gov. Kay Ivy signed into law earlier this month, says medical professionals who provide gender care for people ages 18 and under could face up to 10 years in prison.

The measure is part of a larger Republican-led movement to impose restrictions on the lives of transgender youth in the United States. Despite the legislative impetus to discontinue this type of treatment, gender mainstreaming is a recommended practice for people who identify as transsexual, which means that they identify with a gender that is different from that determined at birth or different from gender. , with a gender expression that does not strictly correspond to society’s traditional notions of gender. Separately, two families with transgender teenagers and two doctors sued the state of Alabama earlier this month, also claiming it violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“Transsexual plaintiffs are currently receiving medical care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for sexual dysphoria,” the lawsuit said. “If allowed to take effect, the law will suspend these medically necessary treatments, prevent them from receiving future medically necessary treatments for sexual dysphoria, and cause them to suffer irreparable physical and psychological harm.”

Gina Mayola, Ivy’s director of communications, told CNN earlier that the governor’s office was “prepared to protect our values ​​and this legislation,” and Ivy cited the law as a campaign achievement.

In a tweet on Friday, Ivy said: “Some things are just facts: summer is hot, the ocean is big and gender is a matter of biology, not identity.”

CNN’s Mary Kay Maloney contributed to this report.