A federal appeals court on Wednesday declined to reconsider a temporary block on Arkansas’s enforcement of a ban on sex change procedures for minors. This means the ban continues to be blocked until a federal trial concludes.
The decision comes while a federal bench trial that is being heard by U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. related to the matter is on hold until Nov. 28.
That trial will decide whether or not to permanently block or uphold the state’s law that bans transgender procedures for minors.
The 2021 law in question is called the Arkansas Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act, which has been challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), representing four minors and two doctors.
Lawyers for the state of Arkansas asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Eight Circuit for the full court to hear its appeal of the temporary block, which was put in place by Moody in 2021.
The federal appeals court rejected that request.
Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge’s office said the state’s request was denied for procedural reasons, and the state could appeal again once the trial about the ban is complete, according to The Associated Press.
A spokesperson for Rutledge told The Associated Press that Rutledge will “continue to wholeheartedly defend” the ban “because it protects children from these experimental life-altering procedures.”
Arkansas was the first state to enact a ban on sex change procedures for minors.
The Safe Act Trial
On Oct. 21, after three days of testimony from the ACLU’s witnesses in Little Rock, Moody declined the state’s request to dismiss the lawsuit against the ban.Moody said that he'd been given clear “marching instructions” by a federal appeals court decision on Aug. 25 that largely neutralized the state’s arguments against the ACLU lawsuit.
The federal appeals court had ruled that Moody was correct when he temporarily blocked the law from taking effect in 2021.
Lawyers for the state of Arkansas have argued that the state is within its authority to make laws to regulate the medical profession.
Dylan Jacobs, an Arkansas assistant solicitor general, contends that it’s in the state’s interests to protect young people from making irreversible decisions that impact their lifelong health.
Some transgender people who have regretted transgender treatments and surgeries have said their lives and mental health did not improve after the fact, which runs counter to the prevailing narrative of trans activists.
During the trial, the ACLU argued that based on witness testimony, cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers “greatly improved” the lives of young people who received these treatments.
The SAFE Act, however, notes that suicide rates, psychiatric morbidities, and mortality rates among those who’ve undergone inpatient transgender surgeries remain “markedly elevated.”
Meanwhile, the trial, which began on Oct. 17 and has mostly heard from the plaintiff’s witnesses, will resume in Moody’s court on Nov. 28 with testimony from the state’s witnesses.
