The emergency regulation would limit access to gender-affirming care for patients of all ages, announced amid attempts in the General Assembly to impose similar restrictions on minors.
St. Louis County Circuit Judge Ellen Ribaudo extended a temporary block on an emergency regulation restricting access to gender-affirming care on Monday. The hold will block the regulation until at least May 15.
Ribaudo initially blocked the rule last Wednesday, hours before it was set to come into effect.
The regulation, announced by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey on April 23, restricts access to affirming health care such as puberty blockers and gender transition surgery. The regulation was originally scheduled to take effect last Thursday and expire on Feb. 6, 2024.
Ribaudo made the ruling on Monday after the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, Lambda Legal and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner filed suit in St. Louis against Bailey’s authority to issue such a regulation.
Ribaudo wrote in a statement that those suing “are at high risk of having their medical care interrupted for an unknown length of time; once the Rule goes into effect, they may lose access to medical care through their current providers until such time as the provider can come into compliance with the Rule’s requirements.”
The regulation requires patients seeking gender-affirming care to undergo a psychiatric evaluation of at least 15 hour-long sessions in no less than 18 months, have expressed “intense patterns of gender dysphoria” for at least three consecutive years and have treated or resolved all other mental health conditions, which the rule describes as “mental health comorbidities.”
“The regulation is necessary due to the skyrocketing number of gender transition interventions, despite rising concerns in the medical community that these interventions lack clinical evidence of safety or success,” Bailey said in a statement released on the attorney general’s website.
The lawsuit argues that Bailey’s claims about the affected health care are unfounded and that the effect of the regulation oversteps his reach as Missouri’s attorney general, particularly by abusing the consumer-protection law to regulate gender-affirming health care.
“The Attorney General’s so-called emergency rule is based on distorted, misleading and debunked claims and ignores the overwhelming body of scientific and medical evidence supporting this care,” Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Missouri said in a joint statement.
The emergency regulation also requires health care providers to disclose information and research findings that detail potential side effects of certain gender-affirming treatments, alongside screening the patient to determine whether they have autism and are not experiencing “social contagion with respect to the patient’s gender identity.”
The case brought against Bailey also accuses him of sidestepping the Missouri legislature, as legislation similar to the regulation currently faces a standstill in the Senate. The regulation was announced on the same day that the Missouri House passed House Bill 419, which would completely ban minors from accessing gender-affirming care, and House Bill 183, which would require middle and high school students to compete in sports based on their assigned sex at birth.
The House bills mirror similar legislation passed recently by the state Senate, but without a termination date for the ban and an exemption for minors already receiving hormone therapy, added to end a democratic filibuster. Neither the House nor Senate bills seem likely to pass into law in their current states.
Editor’s note: This story and headline were updated at 5:05 p.m. on May 1 after a judge extended the temporary halt on the ruling.
Edited by Zoe Homan | zhoman@themaneater.com
Copy edited by Lauren Courtney