Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed a motion for summary judgment on Monday in a lawsuit brought by liberal groups against the state of Alabama's transgender surgery ban.
In April 2022, Gov. Kay Ivey signed the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act (VCAP) into law, which prohibits doctors in Alabama from performing transgender operations or prescribing cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers to individuals under 19.
VCAP went into effect May 8, 2022, but was blocked by U.S. District Judge Liles Burke a few days later. The injunction came after multiple parties added themselves as plaintiffs in a case challenging the law, including five transgender minors by way of their parents and the Department of Justice.
The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled in August 2023 that the district court had erroneously enjoined state officials from enforcing VCAP. The appeals court also struck down the injunction in January. The ban in Alabama is now back in effect while litigation continues at the federal district court level.
Marshall said in a filing on Monday in federal district court, “When this Court granted a preliminary injunction two years ago, it did so on a necessarily rushed timeline with sparse facts and no guidance from the Eleventh Circuit. Since then, the factual and legal landscapes have changed dramatically. Defendants respectfully submit that those changes entitle them to summary judgment.”
“In short, neither the Court nor Alabama need treat WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) as anything other than the activist interest group it has shown itself to be. The Constitution allows States to reject WPATH’s model of “care” and protect vulnerable minors from life-altering transitioning 'treatments.' The Court should grant Defendants summary judgment,” he added.
The partially redacted motion to summary judgment also outlines how minors in Alabama are harmed by transitioning treatments.
“Those clinicians are not foreign to Alabama. To take one particularly galling example, the LA Times profiled an OB/GYN in Tuscaloosa, Dr. Leah Torres, who began providing transitioning treatments when her abortion revenue dried up after Dobbs. 'Torres does not believe adolescents seeking hormones require mental health evaluations,' so she had no trouble prescribing cross-sex hormones via telehealth to a teenager with 'a history of depression and anxiety' whose 'pediatrician and staff at a psychiatric hospital' had refused the teen’s request,” Marshall wrote in the filing.
He continued, “But across America—across the Western world—heartbreaking instances of regret and detransition are occurring. There is no reason to think Alabama’s children have been spared.”
Summary Judgement by Caleb Taylor on Scribd
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