The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is challenging an Alabama law that makes it a felony for doctors to provide “gender-affirming” healthcare to people under age 19, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
The Associated Press reported that the department’s motion seeks to intervene in a lawsuit challenging the law as unconstitutional and blocking it before it is scheduled to take effect May 8.
The action comes after the department sent a letter to all 50 state attorneys general warning that blocking transgender and nonbinary youth from receiving gender-affirming care could be an infringement of federal constitutional protections.
Doctors and others would face up to 10 years in prison for violating the Alabama law. Trans youth and parents have said Alabama is trying to ban what they consider necessary, and sometimes life-saving care for them.
“The law discriminates against transgender minors by unjustifiably denying them access to certain forms of medically necessary care,” the complaint states. “As a result of S.B. 184, medical professionals, parents, and minors old enough to make their own medical decisions are forced to choose between forgoing medically necessary procedures and treatments or facing criminal prosecution.”
As Townhall covered, Senate Bill 184, will “prohibit the performance of a medical procedure or the prescription of medication, upon or to a minor child, that is intended to alter the minor child’s gender or delay puberty.” It is to be known as the “Alabama Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act.”
GOP Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said during the bill signing that "we should especially protect our children from these radical, life-altering drugs and surgeries when they are at such a vulnerable stage in life.”
"If the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl,” she added.
