DOJ, families of transgender youth oppose summary judgment in lawsuit over care ban

A person holding a flag representing the transgender community. (Getty)

The United States Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and private plaintiffs – transgender youth and their families – accused the Alabama attorney general’s office Monday of using “disputed facts” in moving for summary judgment in a lawsuit against the state’s 2022 youth gender-affirming care ban.

In briefs opposing the state’s motion for summary judgment, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that most of the evidence introduced in trial contradicted the state’s claims.

“Defendants’ motion for summary judgment should be denied because it rests on disputed facts and serves only to illustrate why a trial is necessary,” they wrote.

Plaintiffs asked for a stay in district court proceedings last week after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider a lawsuit against a similar ban in Tennessee . The state has opposed a stay in proceedings, and argued for a summary judgment, saying it could allow them to join Tennessee at the Supreme Court.

A message was left with the Attorney General’s office Tuesday afternoon. The office has not yet filed a response as of early Tuesday afternoon.

The law makes it a felony to provide hormones or puberty-blockers to transgender individuals under the age of 19. The law also banned genital surgeries on minors, which physicians have repeatedly said do not occur in Alabama.

A physician who prescribed the prohibited drugs in gender-affirming care could face up to 10 years in prison. The plaintiffs sued shortly after the law was signed, and the U.S. Department of Justice joined in the case shortly after.

U.S. District Court Judge Liles C. Burke blocked the enforcement of the  law’s ban on puberty blockers and hormones in 2022, writing that it interfered with parents’ rights to make medical care decisions.

A three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the preliminary injunction, writing that there was not a proven constitutional right to gender affirming care.

The Department of Justice wrote in its brief that the state did not paint an accurate picture in their filings, writing that they “have cobbled together pieces of sentences from obscure emails, attributed quotes to the wrong people, omitted context and conflicting testimony, and misrepresented outdated studies,” despite access to “millions upon millions of pages of documents from the highest tiers of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Johns Hopkins University, World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), Endocrine Society, University of Alabama Pediatrics Multidisciplinary Gender Health Clinic (UAB Clinic), Magic City Wellness Center, and sensitive medical files of individual minor patients.”

“The world Defendants attempt to portray—one of rampant on-demand sterilization, nefarious organizations pushing unsafe treatment to serve political ends, and where transgender youth are not actually transgender—does not exist,” they wrote.

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