Two transgender teenagers and their parents are challenging a Kansas law banning gender-affirming care for minors, arguing the measure violates the state constitution and “is actively harming Kansas families” in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in a state district court.
Kansas’s Senate Bill 63 prohibits health care providers from administering treatments such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries to minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria, characterized by a severe psychological distress that stems from a mismatch between a person’s gender identity and sex at birth.
The bill, passed by the state Legislature in January, includes exceptions for minors born with “a medically verifiable disorder of sex development.” Health care providers who break the law, which also targets social transition, face civil penalties and may be stripped of their license.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Kansas filed Wednesday’s challenge in Douglas County District Court pseudonymously on behalf of plaintiffs Lily Loe, 13, Ryan Roe, 16, and their mothers, Lisa Loe and Rebecca Roe.
The two children “have been thriving since they started receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapy,” the lawsuit states, “but now their trusted doctors in Kansas can no longer help them, and they are at risk of unimaginable suffering.”
For their parents, Senate Bill 63 “impermissibly infringes on the fundamental right to the care, custody, and control of their children,” the lawsuit says, “by displacing their medical decision-making authority with a government mandate, even when they, their adolescent children, and medical providers are all aligned.”
Republican state Attorney General Kris Kobach, who is named in the lawsuit, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the bill in February for the third time in as many years, though her veto ultimately did not stand.
“It is disappointing that the Legislature continues to push for government interference in Kansans’ private medical decisions instead of focusing on issues that improve all Kansans’ lives,” Kelly said in a statement at the time. “Infringing on parental rights is not appropriate, nor is it a Kansas value. As I’ve said before, it is not the job of politicians to stand between a parent and a child who needs medical care of any kind.”
The state’s Republican-led Legislature overrode Kelly’s veto the following week. Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson (R) and House Speaker Dan Hawkins (R) said they voted to override the governor’s action “in honor of the children Governor Kelly failed to protect with her repeated vetoes of this sensible legislation.”
The ACLU and the ACLU of Kansas are seeking an injunction to block enforcement of the law while the case moves forward.
“Our clients and every Kansan should have the freedom to make their own private medical decisions and consult with their doctors without the intrusion of Kansas politicians,” said D.C. Hiegert, civil liberties legal fellow for the ACLU of Kansas.
