High court reinstates enforcement of Ohio’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors during appeal

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio may enforce its ban on gender-affirming care for minors while an appeal proceeds, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday. The law also bans transgender women and girls from participating in female sports.

The high court’s 4-3 decision reverses a lower court ruling from March that had blocked the 2023 law from taking effect.

The order marked a victory for Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who has characterized the legal dispute as a fight “to protect these unprotected children.”

Yost has parted ways on the issue with the governor, fellow Republican Mike DeWine, who vetoed what was labeled the SAFE Act in December 2023 in a move he called thoughtful, limited and “pro-life.” The GOP-supermajority Legislature quickly overrode the action.

Justice Pat DeWine, the governor’s son, joined the three Republican justices elected in November — Joseph Deters, Megan Shanahan and Dan Hawkins — in reinstating enforcement of the law. Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy, and Justices Jennifer Brunner and Pat Fischer dissented.

The law calls for banning counseling, surgery and hormone therapy for youth, unless they are already receiving such therapies and a doctor deems it risky to stop, as well as containing the sports provisions.

The litigation was filed in March 2024 by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Ohio and the global law firm Goodwin, who argued the law not only denies health care to transgender children and teens, but it specifically discriminates against them accessing it by allowing the use of identical medications for other purposes.

They lost at the trial court level, but later succeeded in getting the law temporarily blocked by a panel of the 10th District Court of Appeals, which reversed the lower court judge’s decision allowing the law to go into effect, on grounds it “reasonably limits parents’ rights.”

The Center for Christian Virtue, which lobbied for the law, lauded Tuesday’s ruling.

“The General Assembly has every ability to enact laws protecting children like the SAFE Act,” President Aaron Baer said in a statement, “and the Supreme Court sided with the Ohio Constitution by overturning the lower court.”