United States District Judge Sarah Geraghty, appointed by Joe Biden, has blocked part of a Georgia law that bans sex change hormones for minors.
The law bans most sex change-related surgeries and hormone replacement therapies for those under 18. The surgery prohibition remains in place.
Puberty blockers were not banned, and doctors who prescribed hormone replacements for minors before the law took effect were allowed to continue.
The Georgia General Assembly passed the law earlier this year, and it went into effect in July.
One month before the legislation became law, the parents of four children who claim to be transgender filed a lawsuit attempting to stop it.
The complaint argued that the law “violates the fundamental rights of parents to make medical decisions to ensure the health and well-being of their children” and “violates the guarantees of equal protection by denying transgender youth essential, and often lifesaving, medical treatment based on their sex and on their transgender status.”
The plaintiffs did not seek to have the portion of the law regarding surgeries halted.
In the judge’s temporary block, she wrote that the plaintiff’s lawsuit is likely to succeed.
“Plaintiffs have established that they will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction,” Geraghty wrote, including risks of depression, anxiety, disordered eating, self-harm and suicidal thoughts,” Geraghty wrote.
“Without an injunction, the middle-school age plaintiffs will be unable to obtain in Georgia a course of treatment that has been recommended by their health care providers in light of their individual diagnoses and mental health needs,” the ruling continued.
According to a report from WANE, “The state argued any preliminary injunction, if it were issued, should be narrowed only to the children who are currently part of the lawsuit.”
However, Geraghty ruled that a “narrowly focused injunction would be unworkable, both because of the practical difficulty in obtaining care under the law, and also because it might not even be possible to ‘fashion an injunction that would allow them to secure relief without compromising their anonymity.'”
