Judge lets Oklahoma ban on gender treatments for minors take effect

(Reuters) - A federal judge in Oklahoma has allowed a state law banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors to take effect, adding to a growing split among courts on whether such laws can be enforced.

Gender-affirming care includes puberty blockers, hormones and surgery.

Major U.S. medical associations say gender-affirming care is an appropriate and potentially life-saving treatment for gender dysphoria, or distress caused by the mismatch between transgender people's sex assigned at birth and their gender identity. Proponents of the bans say the treatments are unproven and risk long-term harm.

In a preliminary order Thursday, U.S. District Judge John Heil in Tulsa said families challenging the law were not likely to succeed in proving that it illegally discriminates on the basis of sex or infringes on parents' rights.

A spokesperson for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said the office "continues to fulfill its duty to defend" the law and "has won a ruling that results in full enforcement of that law."

A spokesperson for Lambda Legal, which represents the plaintiffs, had no immediate comment.

The law, passed in May, makes it a crime to provide minors "medical or surgical services performed for the purpose of attempting to affirm the minor's perception of his or her gender or biological sex, if that perception is inconsistent with the minor's biological sex."

Five families sued the state to block the law in May. They said the law discriminated based on transgender status, and violated parents' rights to direct their children's medical treatment.

Heil, refusing to halt the law while the lawsuit proceeds, rejected the arguments. He said the law targeted particular treatments, not sex, and that the U.S. Constitution does not recognize a "fundamental right" for parents to choose particular medical treatments for their children.

The decision comes a week after a federal appeals court allowed similar laws to take effect in Tennessee and Kentucky. Another federal appeals court allowed an Alabama ban to take effect in August.

But federal district courts in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and Indiana have overturned such bans, as has a state court in Montana.

The conflict among federal courts could eventually lead to the issue going before the U.S. Supreme Court, although there is no current petition before the court.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Rod Nickel)

By Brendan Pierson