CHARLESTON – West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has praised a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that says Idaho can enforce its ban on providing puberty blockers or hormones to minors.
The Idaho ruling was the first time the issue reached the Supreme Court, which issued its 6-3 ruling April 15.
The Idaho law also bans gender-affirming surgery, which is extremely rare for those under 18. At least two dozen states have put similar bans into law in the last few years, nearly all of them challenged in court. Twenty other states currently are enforcing them.
Morrisey
| Courtesy photo
The ruling allowed Idaho officials to temporarily enforce the statewide ban. In its emergency request filed in February, Idaho asked the court to block a lower court order that stopped the implementation of the law that makes it a felony to provide medical treatments such as such as puberty-blocking drugs, hormone therapy and certain surgeries to transgender minors.
The justices left the block in place only as to the two specific plaintiffs involved in this case.
“This case is really simple,” Morrisey said. “It’s about protecting children from life-altering procedures — irreversible procedures. I am pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision and am confident in the merits of Idaho’s case as it continues to defend its rights to protect children.”
Morrisey was part of a 20-state coalition last November in support of Idaho’s law, which bars sex-change surgeries and puberty-blocking drugs for minors.
The Supreme Court justices did not dive into the constitutionality of the ban. Instead, they ruled 6-3 that enforcement can proceed, except against the two transgender teens who sued. And most of the justice’s written opinions dealt with judicial procedure, exploring whether it’s proper for courts to impose universal injunctions blocking laws while questions about them move through the courts.
As with most cases on the emergency docket, the court didn’t issue a formal opinion. But several justices explained their positions.
The conservative justices said the decision was meant to limit how far lower court rule when temporarily blocking a state from enforcing a law.
“A return to a more piecemeal and deliberative judicial process may strike some as inefficient,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in an opinion joined by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. “It may promise less power for the judge and less drama and excitement for the parties and public. But if any of that makes today’s decision wrong, it makes it wrong in the best possible ways.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the majority opinion was “micromanaging the lower courts’ exercise of their discretionary authority.”
“This court is not compelled to rise and respond every time an applicant rushes to us with an alleged emergency, and it is especially important for us to refrain from doing so in novel, highly charged, and unsettled circumstances,” Jackson wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, noting the lower federal court “determined that a never-before-in-effect Idaho law is likely unconstitutional” and that court temporarily blocked the law’s enforcement while it considered the legal challenges involved.