Oklahoma judge declines to block felony ban on gender-affirming care

An Oklahoma judge has rejected a request from a group of medical providers and families with transgender children to temporarily block the state from enforcing its felony ban on gender-affirming health care for minors, ruling that prohibiting such care is “rationally related to legitimate state interests.”

Oklahoma District Judge John Frederick Heil III ruled late Thursday that the law, Senate Bill 613, “is not an outright ban on gender affirming care” because it does not restrict access to surgeries or doses of testosterone or estrogen for transgender adults.

“Instead, SB 613 requires only that, to the extent an individual desires to utilize certain physiological procedures to treat the psychological condition of gender dysphoria, he or she must wait until a certain age to do so,” Heil, an appointee of former President Trump, wrote in his opinion.

Passed by the state legislature in early May and approved by Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt in less than 24 hours, Senate Bill 613 makes it a felony crime for health care professionals to provide minors with gender-affirming medical care including puberty blockers and hormones.

Stitt made the ban a priority of this year’s legislative session. He called on state lawmakers last year to ban “permanent gender transition surgeries and therapies” in 2023 while signing a bill passed during a special session to withhold federal funds from OU Health if the hospital system continued providing gender-affirming care to minors.

In May, five Oklahoma families with transgender adolescents and a doctor who treats transgender youths sued the state in federal court, arguing Senate Bill 613 discriminates against transgender people and violates the right of parents to make decisions on behalf of their children. 

The state’s Republican attorney general later that month signed a binding agreement not to enforce the law until a judge either granted or rejected the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction.

It is not clear whether the law, which was slated to take effect May 1, will automatically go into effect following Heil’s ruling. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

Lawmakers in five states — Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, Idaho and North Dakota — have passed laws making it a felony crime to provide gender-affirming health care to transgender minors, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks state legislation on LGBTQ issues. In Alabama, doctors who violate the law could face up to a decade in prison.

Laws that ban or heavily restrict gender-affirming health care for transgender youths have been passed by 22 states since 2021.