Federal judge stays potential trial over Alabama’s gender-affirming medical care ban

A transgender flag sits on the grass during the "Trans Youth Prom" outside of the U.S. Capitol building on May 22, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

A federal judge overseeing a trial over Alabama’s ban on medical gender-affirming care for transgender minors stayed proceedings on Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up a lawsuit over a similar ban in Tennessee.

In a three-page order, U.S. District Court Judge Liles C. Burke ordered a stay of a potential trial setting until the Supreme Court issues its ruling.

Attorneys for transgender youth and their families, who are seeking to overturn the ban, and the U.S. Department of Justice, which intervened in the case, asked for the stay last week , writing that the Supreme Court decision could change the standards governing the case.

Burke appeared to agree, writing that the Supreme Court controls the standard of review for a summary judgment as much as it does for a trial.

“If the Supreme Court declines to change the standard of review, the parties’ motions will be fully briefed and ripe for decision,” he wrote.

The Alabama attorney general’s office opposes a stay and wants summary judgment in the case to allow them to join Tennessee at the U.S. Supreme Court.

A message was left Wednesday morning with the Attorney General’s Office.

Shannon Minter, attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), said in a Wednesday morning phone call that he was optimistic about a Supreme Court’s decision, citing Bostock vs. Clayton County, decided in 2020, which found that employers cannot discriminate on the basis of homosexuality or transgender status. Minter said the question at the Supreme Court was whether it is sex discrimination or not.

“It would be extraordinary for them, in such a short amount of time, to do a complete reversal of that,” he said.

NCLR is among the attorneys representing the plaintiffs.

Minter said that the law remaining in effect is “severely harmful.”

“This is medically needed care, so these families have had to find ways to obtain the care for  their adolescent children out of state,” he said. “They’re having to travel and go to great lengths and spend resources to go out of Alabama to get their children the care they need.”

Burke did not stay the the deadline for briefings on experts both parties bring forth, known as Daubert, or summary judgment.

The Daubert Standard is a systematic framework for trial judges to assess expert witnesses before they go before a jury, according to the Legal Information Institute.

Alabama’s 2022 law makes it a felony for providers to prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to transgender youth under the age of 19. Providers can face up to 10 years in prison.

The law also bans genital surgeries, which providers have said do not happen to minors in the state.

The state has been involved in litigation since shortly after the bill was signed into law by Gov. Kay Ivey in 2022.

Burke blocked the ban on medications from going into effect in 2022 , writing that it interfered with parental decisions and that the state had failed to show that the medications were harmful. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision last year, writing that there was no fundamental right to gender-affirming care.

In the Tuesday filing, Burke wrote that a summary judgment would take a substantial amount of judicial resources, and they might need to do it again if the U.S. Supreme Court changes the standard of review.

“These gains in judicial efficiency far outweigh any harm to the state from litigation risks that might attend the stay,” he wrote. “And what’s more, the state suffers no prejudice from a delay in the final adjudication: stay or no, the state may continue to enforce its law.”

This story was updated at 10:38 a.m. with comment from Shannon Minter of the National Center for LEsbian Rights.

The post Federal judge stays potential trial over Alabama’s gender-affirming medical care ban appeared first on Alabama Reflector .