A law banning transgender surgery and drugs for minors took effect on Sunday after the law was signed in April.
Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the law that made providing hormone treatments, transition surgery, or puberty blockers to anyone under 19 years old in the state punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Ivey said in a statement when she signed the bill last month that “if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl.”
“We should especially protect our children from these radical, life-altering drugs and surgeries when they are at such a vulnerable stage in life,” she added.
Republican state Rep. Wes Allen, who sponsored the bill in the Alabama House of Representatives, said in April that the legislation is about protecting minors.
“It’s about protecting these minors,” Allen said. “And it’s not about adults, but it’s about those minors. Their minds are not fully developed to make these decisions on these medications and surgeries.”
Alabama’s law makes it the second state to attempt to ban puberty blockers for minors, and the first state to enact such a law. In April 2021, Arkansas passed a similar bill that was vetoed by Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson because he said it was too broad.
“The law is very similar to legislation passed in Florida banning teachers from teaching on the issues between kindergarten and third grade. Critics dubbed the legislation, signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, as the ‘don’t say gay” bill,” Fox News reported.
U.S. District Judge Liles Burke concluded a hearing on Friday regarding a lawsuit by the Human Rights Campaign and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders that is attempting to temporarily stop enforcement of the law while the suit is pending.
“The U.S. Department of Justice has joined the case, saying the Alabama law ‘violated the equal protection clause’ of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment,” according to a Reuters report.
In addition to Alabama, twenty states have similar bills under consideration, according to the group Freedom for All Americans.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state agencies in February to investigate reports of transgender children who have received gender change surgery.
“Texas law imposes reporting requirements upon all licensed professionals who have direct contact with children who may be subject to such abuse, including doctors, nurses, and teachers, and provides criminal penalties for failure to report such child abuse.” Abbott wrote to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also released a formal attorney general opinion in February concluding that performing certain “sex-change” procedures on children, and prescribing puberty-blockers to them, is “child abuse” under Texas law.
“There is no doubt that these procedures are ‘abuse’ under Texas law, and thus must be halted,” Paxton wrote. “The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has a responsibility to act accordingly. I’ll do everything I can to protect against those who take advantage of and harm young Texans.”