JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Today, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey led a multistate coalition in filing an amicus brief supporting Arkansas’ law banning irreversible gender transition procedures for minors. The brief asks the Eighth Circuit to hold an en banc hearing on the constitutionality of the law after a panel of judges on the Eighth Circuit struck it down.
“As the first state to successfully defend at the trial court a legal challenge to a law protecting children from gender mutilation, Missouri is now taking our litigation strategy to other states,” said Attorney General Bailey. “We shined a light on the lack of science supporting these experimental, irreversible procedures, and the Court ruled in our favor. We’re deploying this strategy in legal battles across the nation because all children are worth defending.”
The attorneys general assert, “The States have a strong interest in regulating procedures deemed by an emerging international consensus to be too dangerous.”
The states continue, “This issue requires prompt attention because it involves urgent health and welfare concerns for children. In recent months and years, several European countries—including Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the United Kingdom—have greatly restricted the use of these interventions after determining that there is not sufficient evidence to prove safety or efficacy in light of the known and serious side effects. In many of these countries, surgeries are prohibited entirely for minors, and hormonal interventions are allowed only in formal research protocols (which have not yet begun); they are not permitted in general medicine.”
They conclude, “The Court should waste no time in speedily correcting these flaws and bringing the Eighth Circuit into alignment with every other federal court of appeals to have addressed this issue.”
Joining Missouri in filing the brief are the attorneys general of Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
The full brief can be read here.