A federal appeals court ruled that laws prohibiting child sex change surgeries do not violate parental rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled 8-2 that Arkansas’ Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act (SAFE) can take effect.
“The question is whether this Nation’s history and tradition, as well as its historical understanding of ordered liberty, support the right of a parent to obtain for his or her child a medical treatment that, although the child desires it and a doctor approves, the state legislature deems inappropriate for minors,” the majority wrote. “This court finds no such right in this Nation’s history and tradition.”
“Given the two parallel currents in this Nation’s history and tradition—first, states can prohibit medical treatments for adults and children, and second, parents cannot automatically exempt their children from regulations—this court does not find a deeply rooted right of parents to exempt their children from regulations reasonably prohibiting gender transition procedures,” the court added.
“This is a win for common sense – and for our kids,” Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) said of the ruling. “Arkansas’ first-in-the nation law to protect kids from life-altering gender experiments is back in effect!”
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin also celebrated the ruling. “The Eighth Circuit held that Arkansas’s SAFE Act is constitutional. That law prohibits healthcare providers from performing gender-transition surgeries on minors or providing them puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones,” he said. “I applaud the court’s decision recognizing that Arkansas has a compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological health of children and am pleased that children in Arkansas will be protected from risky, experimental procedures with lifelong consequences.”
The ruling comes days after a similar ruling had been made in Oklahoma. Citing the Supreme Court’s June decision in United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld a related law in Tennessee, Circuit Judge Joel M. Carson ruled that Oklahoma’s law is legally sound and “functionally indistinguishable” from the Tennessee statute. The court found the state has an appropriate basis for regulating gender transition procedures to protect minors’ physical and psychological well-being.
