Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Montana, and Perkins Coie yesterday asked a state district court to block enforcement of SB 99, signed by Governor Gianforte in April 2023, which bans the only evidence-based care for gender dysphoria for transgender individuals under 18 years of age. The legal advocates filed a challenge to SB 99 in May on behalf of Montana families with transgender adolescents and medical professionals with transgender patients.
The law is scheduled to go into effect Oct. 1, 2023, and today the legal advocates filed a motion for preliminary injunction seeking to block enforcement of the law as the lawsuit proceeds.
Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Montana, and Perkins Coie released the following joint statement:
“Courts across the country have struck down bans similar to the one in Montana, and the Montana Constitution provides for even greater individual rights protections than its federal counterpart. As these courts have recognized, there is no basis for states to interfere in the relationships that exist between parents and their children, nor between medical professionals and their patients, in defiance of the medical consensus around gender-affirming care. They have similarly rejected the distorted claims and quack science of the so-called “experts” trotted out by backers of these bans. We are asking the court to remove the threat hanging over transgender youth and their parents of a sudden and harmful termination of their medical treatment, which has been vetted and supported by all major professional medical associations, as we pursue our challenge.”
All major mainstream medical associations, such as the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose laws like SB 99.
Read more about the case here: https://lambdalegal.org/case/van-garderen-v-state-of-montana/. Read the Preliminary Injunction filing here: https://lambdalegal.org/legal_document/van-garderen_mt_20230717_preliminary-injunction/