A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected a challenge to an Oklahoma law that bans sex change drugs and surgeries for minors.
Senate Bill 613, which was signed into law in 2023, makes it a felony for medical professionals to perform sex change surgeries or give puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors. Following its enactment, five families of transgender-identifying children and a physician sued the state, claiming the law violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses by discriminating on the basis of sex and transgender status.
Circuit Judge Joel M. Carson, an appointee of President Donald Trump, disagreed with that assessment, ruling instead that the law turns on the basis of age and medical procedure. Carson cited the Supreme Court’s June decision in United States v. Skrmetti upholding a similar law in Tennessee, with the judge calling the Tennessee and Oklahoma laws “functionally indistinguishable.”
In the Tennessee case, the Supreme Court ruled that the state law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The High Court additionally said the law meets the “rational basis inquiry” and noted: “Where there exist plausible reasons for the relevant government action, our inquiry is at an end.”
Carson, pointing to the Supreme Court’s decision, concluded that the Oklahoma’s law “rationally relates to Oklahoma’s interest in safeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of minors in light of the debate among medical experts about the risks and benefits associated with treating a minor’s gender dysphoria with gender transitioning procedures.”
“We recognize the importance of this issue to all involved. But this remains a novel issue with disagreement on how to assure children’s health and welfare,” Carson wrote for a three-judge panel. “We will not usurp the legislature’s judgment when it engages in earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality, and practicality of gender transition procedures for minors.”
“While we respect that Plaintiffs disagree with the legislature assessment of such procedures’ risks, that alone does not invalidate a democratically enacted law on rational-basis grounds,” he continued. “Parent Plaintiffs have thus failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits, and we affirm the district court’s preliminary injunction denial as to Plaintiffs’ Due Process Claim.”
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R) celebrated the court’s decision in a post to X.
“For years, radical left activists pushed the lie of ‘gender transition’ procedures for minors. The truth is much simpler: there is no such thing,” Drummond said. “Today, here in Oklahoma, we celebrate a new decision from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that recognizes this truth and protects our children. I am proud to have fought this battle and won. This is a victory for our children, for our Constitution, and for common sense.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs, American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Oklahoma, and Lambda Legal, called the decision a “devastating outcome for transgender youth and their families across Oklahoma and another tragic result of the Supreme Court’s errant and harmful ruling” in the Tennessee case.”
“Oklahoma’s ban is openly discriminatory and provably harmful to the transgender youth of this state, putting political dogma above parents, their children, and their family doctors,” the attorneys said in a joint statement. “While we and our clients consider our next steps, we want all transgender people and their families across Oklahoma to know we will never stop fighting for the future they deserve and their freedom to be themselves.”
The case is Poe v. Drummond, No. 23-5110 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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