A recent decision by a North Dakota judge has denied a request to temporarily halt a state law prohibiting transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming medical care. This decision leaves intact one of the nation’s most stringent transgender health care bans. District Judge Jackson Lofgren, on Monday, turned down a temporary restraining order sought by three North Dakota families with transgender children and a physician specializing in treating transgender youths. This legal challenge, initiated in September, will proceed to a hearing for an additional request for a preliminary injunction scheduled for January.
The denial of the temporary restraining order was met with disappointment by the three North Dakota families and their attorney, Brittany Stewart of Gender Justice. Despite the setback, Stewart expressed confidence that presenting all the evidence would ultimately reveal the need to permanently end the health care ban, deeming it the only just, equitable, and constitutional resolution.
In his ruling, Judge Lofgren pointed to the plaintiffs’ “nearly five-month delay” in filing their initial complaint. The lawsuit argues that the state’s restrictions on puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries violate the constitutional rights of transgender youths in North Dakota. The contested law, House Bill 1254, came into effect in April after being signed by Republican Governor Doug Burgum, a 2024 GOP presidential candidate.
House Bill 1254 criminalizes the prescription or administration of puberty blockers, testosterone, or estrogen to transgender minors, punishable by up to 360 days in jail and $3,000 in fines. The law also categorizes health care providers performing gender-affirming surgeries on minors as guilty of a felony. Interestingly, the same care is legally permissible for non-transgender children and adolescents in the state.
Despite every major medical organization considering gender-affirming health care for transgender adults and minors medically necessary, 22 states, including North Dakota, have passed laws heavily restricting or banning such care for transgender minors since 2021. Nineteen of these states passed such laws in 2022. Legal challenges have been mounted against many of these laws, with court orders currently blocking health care bans in Montana and Indiana, and a partially blocked ban in Florida.
In June, a federal judge in Arkansas declared the state’s first-in-the-nation ban unconstitutional. Preliminary injunctions halting the enforcement of gender-affirming health care bans in Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee were lifted over the summer by federal appeals courts. Recently, a federal judge in Georgia restored the state’s ban on puberty blockers and hormones, which had been blocked by a lower court in August.
