A view of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, U.S., March 4, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo
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June 30 (Reuters) – Just days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down women’s constitutional right to abortion, Alabama is citing that ruling in an effort to ban parents from getting puberty blockers and some other medical procedures for their transgender children.
The citation comes in an appeal by Alabama’s attorney general seeking to overturn a federal court order that partially blocked enforcement of a newly enacted state ban on medical interventions for youth whose gender identity is inconsistent with their birth sex.
The appeal is believed to mark the first time a state has specifically invoked the Supreme Court’s recent opinion overturning its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion and applied the same reasoning to a separate issue affecting other rights.
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Echoing the Supreme Court’s appeal to overturn Roe, the Alabama complaint filed Monday argued that the state has the authority to ban puberty-blocking hormones and other therapies for transgender minors in part because they are not “deeply rooted in our history or traditions. “
The appeal also claims that such treatments are dangerous and experimental, contrary to widespread agreement among mainstream medical and mental health professionals that such gender-affirming care saves lives by reducing the risk of depression and suicide.
Last Friday’s 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority immediately cleared the way for many states to enact measures that would eliminate or limit a woman’s ability to terminate her own pregnancy. Read more
But civil libertarians also worry that the latest abortion decision, in a Mississippi case titled Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, will prompt attempts by the Republican-controlled legislature to target other rights that conservatives oppose. .
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said that nothing in the Dobbs decision should “cast doubt on precedents not dealing with abortion.”
However, Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, urged the court to revisit past decisions protecting the right to contraception, legalizing gay marriage nationwide and invalidating state laws banning gay sex.
CONSTITUTIONAL BASIS
A lawsuit in Alabama seeking to reinstate a law barring parents from providing medical reassignment care to their children appears intended to prompt just such a review, according to LGBTQ rights advocates.
“To our knowledge, this is the first case in which a state has invoked Dobbs to attack another fundamental right,” Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Lesbian Rights Center, said in an email to Reuters on Thursday.
Still, Minter said Alabama’s strategy is “unlikely to gain much traction because the majority opinion is so clear that its adherence is limited to abortion rights.”
Alito sought to distinguish abortion from other established rights because of its importance in ending what the Roe decision called “potential life.” But many legal scholars note that Dobbs calls into question the constitutional basis for other rights later recognized by the court. Read more
Alabama’s law, passed by a Republican-dominated legislature, was blocked from taking effect in May, less than a week after it took effect, in a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Liles Burke, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump. Read more
Burke argued that high court decisions make it clear that parents have the right to direct their children’s medical care if they meet acceptable standards and that transgender people are protected from discrimination under federal law.
Burke left in place the part of the law banning sex-reassignment surgeries, which experts say are extremely rare for minors, as well as other provisions barring school officials from withholding certain gender information from parents.
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Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Robert Birsell
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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