Tennessee AG files motion for emergency stay to overturn transgender health injunction
“Tennessee should not have to wait while hundreds, if not thousands, of children are set upon the path to sterilization,” the brief states.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Tennessee’s Attorney General has filed a motion for an emergency stay with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in response to the temporary partial injunction imposed by the district court blocking portions of bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
“With bipartisan support, the General Assembly and Governor Bill Lee enacted a law to protect children from the irreparable harms of medical procedures used to treat gender dysphoria. Just three days before the law was to go into effect, a federal district court in Tennessee mostly blocked the law,” the Attorney General’s news release said.
“Until the American medical establishment catches up with the rest of the world on this issue, we will continue to defend the General Assembly’s authority to protect children from these irreversible harms,” Skrmetti said in the release.
In Tennessee, U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson, a Trump administration appointee, stressed that his ruling lined up with federal decisions blocking similar bans across the country but added that courts must “tread carefully” when preventing a law from being enforced.
“If Tennessee wishes to regulate access to certain medical procedures, it must do so in a manner that does not infringe on the rights conferred by the United States Constitution, which is of course supreme to all other laws of the land,” Richardson wrote in the order.
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Skrmetti’s brief explains: “Tennessee should not have to wait while hundreds, if not thousands, of children are set upon the path to sterilization. Nor should it take months of briefing to see how wrong the district court’s decision is. Each day this injunction persists, Tennessee’s children, and thus Tennessee, will suffer irreparable harm. The Court should enter a stay.”
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee granted a request for a preliminary injunction against the law in a lawsuit brought by Samantha and Brian Williams of Nashville and their 15-year-old daughter, as well as two other anonymous families and Dr. Susan N. Lacy. The law would prohibit medical providers from providing gender-affirming health care to transgender youth and would require trans youth currently receiving gender-affirming care to end that care within nine months of the law’s effective date of July 1, 2023, or by March 31, 2024.
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