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June 20 (UPI) -- A federal judge has struck down the country's first state ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, calling Arkansas' law unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. of the Eastern District of Arkansas overturned and blocked the state's "Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act" on Tuesday.
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"Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing," Moody wrote in Tuesday's 80-page ruling, which could affect other states with similar laws.
Judges have temporarily blocked similar gender-affirming restrictions in Alabama, Florida and Indiana.
Arkansas' law was passed by the General Assembly on April 6, 2021, after former Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed it, making Arkansas the first state in the country to ban gender-affirming care.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued one month later, on behalf of four trans minors and two doctors who provide gender-affirming care, arguing it violated the Constitution. Moody temporarily blocked the law from going into effect in July 2021.
Last week, the Justice Department filed a Statements of Interest of the United States against Arkansas' ban. Lawyers with the department argued it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
"By denying only transgender minors' access to medically necessary care, and penalizing the healthcare providers who would provide it, the state does not further its purported goal of protecting the 'health and safety' of Arkansan minors but rather thwarts it by denying the most vulnerable among them life-saving care," the filing said.
While attorneys for the state argued there was a lack of evidence supporting gender-affirming care for minors, in addition to what they called harmful side effects, remorse with age over transitions and insufficient consent, Moody said "the evidence presented at trial does not support these assertions."
"The testimony of well-credentialed experts, doctors who provide gender-affirming medical care in Arkansas, and families that rely on that care directly refutes any claim by the State that the Act advances an interest in protecting children," Moody wrote Tuesday.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is a Republican, blasted the judge's decision in a tweet.
"This is not 'care' -- it's activists pushing a political agenda at the expense of our kids and subjecting them to permanent and harmful procedures," Sanders wrote.
"Only in the far-Left's woke vision of America is it not appropriate to protect children," Sanders said, adding Attorney General Tim Griffin will appeal the decision to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
