Families sue to stop Missouri’s trans health care ban from going into effect next month

A lawsuit to block Missouri’s ban on gender-affirming care was filed in a state court in Cole County earlier this week.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) signed S.B. 49 into law in June. It bans all gender-affirming treatments, including reversible puberty blockers, for trans youth until August 2027. Any healthcare providers who violate the law risk losing their license. The law also bans both adults in Missouri state prisons and adults on the state’s Medicaid program from accessing gender-affirming care.

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The move comes in response to the state’s Republican-led legislature passing two bills aimed at limiting the rights of transgender Missourians.

The law goes into effect on August 28, but a group of families, medical providers, and LGBTQ+ organizations is trying to stop that from happening, arguing that the ban violates the state constitution’s equal protection guarantee and interferes with parental rights when it comes to determining their kids’ health care.

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“S.B. 49 is the latest chapter in Missouri’s relentless attacks on transgender people, and the stories of the families challenging the law demonstrate the immense, devastating harm it is already inflicting on their lives,” said Lambda Legal’s Nora Huppert. “S.B. 49 would deny adolescent transgender Missourians access to evidence-based treatment supported by the overwhelming medical consensus. This law is not just harmful and cruel; it is life-threatening.”

The plaintiffs include several people who were plaintiffs in a previous lawsuit to block Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s April emergency rule that imposed severe restrictions on gender-affirming care for trans people in the state, including adults. They won a temporary injunction against the rule and Bailey later rescinded it, but a month after he rescinded it, Parson signed S.B. 49.

The plaintiffs in Noe v. Parson include three families of transgender youth, including the family of Nicholas Noe, a 10-year-old trans boy. The complaint says that Noe first made his gender identity known when he was six years old. At that age, the complaint says, he decided to wear “boy clothes” and hasn’t stopped since. He has been seeing a therapist and has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

He has socially transitioned but has not started any medical process for his transition. He wants to go through male puberty and be a man one day. As such, the standard of care would be to start puberty blockers at the onset of puberty and then later, hormone replacement therapy.

But now he’s worried that he will be forced to go through female puberty because of S.B. 49. His mother tried to keep the news of the law away from Nicholas, but he heard about it through family members.

“Nicholas broke down sobbing and asking his mother if Missouri would — as some other state’s policies have threatened to do — take him away from his family,” the complaint states.

Southampton Community Healthcare is also a plaintiff in the case, and they provide gender-affirming care for transgender youth. If S.B. 49 goes into effect, they say they will have to deny patients medically necessary and life-saving care, conflicting with their professional oaths.

PFLAG and the American Association of Physicians for Human Rights are also plaintiffs in the case.

Transgender advocates have been successful in blocking gender-affirming care bans from going into effect in most other states that passed them, except for Tennessee.