A Missouri judge delayed an emergency rule, that would restrict gender-affirming healthcare for transgender residents throughout the state, just hours before it was to take effect. File photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI |
License PhotoApril 26 (UPI) — A Missouri judge on Wednesday delayed an emergency rule that would restrict gender-affirming healthcare for transgender residents throughout the state, just hours before it was to take effect.
St. Louis County Circuit Judge Ellen Ribaudo blocked Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey‘s emergency rule on transgender healthcare, which would apply to all ages, from taking effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday and delaying it until 5 p.m. Monday when Ribaudo plans to issue a second ruling.
“We are grateful for the court’s decision to issue a temporary stay of the implementation of the attorney general’s so-called emergency rule, as it more fully considers our request for a temporary restraining order,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri and Lambda Legal said in a joint statement Wednesday.
The temporary stay comes after a lawsuit was filed Monday by the ACLU and Lambda Legal on behalf of a group of transgender minors and healthcare professionals.
“The attorney general’s so-called emergency rule is based on distorted, misleading and debunked claims and ignores the overwhelming body of scientific and medical evidence supporting this care as well as the medical experts and doctors who work with transgender people every day,” the ACLU and Lambda Legal said earlier this month.
In court Wednesday, the ACLU said the emergency rule allows “a lone partisan official to turn back the clock on decades of medical care” for thousands of transgender people across the state.
“He does not have authority, and we have to stop even pretending he does,” ACLU attorney Tony Rothert argued in St. Louis County court.
The solicitor general in the Attorney General’s Office, Josh Divine, countered that a consumer protection law, called the Merchandising Practices Act, gives the office “extraordinarily broad” leeway to pass emergency measures to regulate business practices.
The emergency rule applies to gender-affirming care for adults and children and would mandate at least 18 months of therapy, a comprehensive screening for autism and three years of documented proof of a “long-lasting, persistent and intense pattern of gender dysphoria” before a patient could receive treatment.
The rule would also require minors to receive a comprehensive screening for social media addiction and compulsion before receiving gender-affirming medical care.
Bailey has argued that Missouri state laws already prohibit gender-affirming care because the medical treatment is “experimental.”
“As attorney general, I will always fight to protect children because gender transition interventions are experimental,” Bailey said earlier this month when he issued the rule.
The emergency rule, which would expire on Feb. 6, 2024, comes after Bailey’s office investigated a St. Louis pediatric transgender center where an employee claimed to have witnessed mistreatment.
