The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Missouri has filed a lawsuit against the state’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) to block new restrictions on gender-affirming care. The regulations, set to take effect on April 27, would require both minors and adults in Missouri to undergo 15 hourly therapy sessions over at least 18 months before receiving gender-affirming care such as hormone therapy or puberty blockers. In addition, they would be screened for autism and “social media addiction,” and any mental health issues would have to be treated and resolved before they would be eligible for gender dysphoria treatment. Transgender individuals of all ages are affected by the regulation, which Bailey’s messaging framed as “protecting” children from what he falsely characterized as “experimental” medical treatment.
While some trans individuals will be allowed to maintain their prescriptions while they attempt to receive the assessments required under the new rule, others have already reported being notified by their doctors that they will no longer be able to prescribe gender-affirming medication. Missouri’s ACLU Deputy Director for Litigation, Gillian Wilcox, called the move a “dangerous and unlawful twisting of Missouri’s consumer protection laws.” The lawsuit filed by the ACLU along with Lambda Legal and Bryan Cave Leighton LLP on behalf of Southampton Community Healthcare, Kelly Storck, Logan Casey, and the families of two transgender people accuses Bailey of “usurping authority and powers outside those of his office.”
The emergency regulation is alleged to “target gender-affirming care with unprecedented and unique restrictions so onerous that it effectively prohibits the provision of this necessary, safe, and effective care for many, if not most, transgender people in Missouri,” according to the lawsuit. The rule is claimed to “interfere with the ability of medical and mental health providers to follow these evidence-based protocols,” thus denying transgender adolescents and adults necessary treatment and preventing parents from obtaining medical care for their adolescents. The lawsuit also asserts that Bailey’s emergency rule “further regulates doctors and mental health providers and prohibits them from treating their patients in accordance with well-established standards of care.”
Every major medical organization in the United States recognizes that gender-affirming healthcare is evidence-based, safe, and effective, and can be medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria, as noted in the suit. The emergency order is called “a baseless and discriminatory attempt to limit the healthcare options for transgender individuals, who already face several barriers accessing necessary and life-saving medical care,” by Dr. Samuel Tochtrop of Southampton Community Healthcare. Lambda Legal staff attorney Nora Huppert stated, “This unprecedented attempt to use Missouri’s consumer protection law to go after necessary and often life-saving healthcare must be stopped.”