The plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging Alabama’s 2022 ban on gender-altering procedures for children have dropped their suit, the state attorney general’s office announced.
The three-year-old challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union, Southern Poverty Law Center and a group of law firms was initiated with help from the Biden administration. The move to dismiss the suit was filed May 1 in U.S. District Court in Alabama’s Middle District.
“This victory is not just for Alabama. This is a generational win for children, for families, and for reality itself,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. “Alabama refused to be bullied. Now the rest of the country is seeing the truth. We are proud to lead that effort.”
The Alabama legislature passed its ban in April 2022 but it was quickly challenged, resulting in a federal district court halting its enforcement. In August 2023, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the injunction, allowing the law to be enforced.
According to Marshall, the discovery process in the case backfired on the plaintiffs, exposing evidence that medical organizations, backed and sometimes led by radical activists, misled parents, “promoted unproven treatments as settled science,” and ignored growing evidence from liberal European countries that cast doubt on the safety of such procedures for children.
“We defeated a preliminary injunction and conducted court-ordered discovery into the so-called ‘standards of care’ that these groups claimed were evidence-based. What we found was devastating to the plaintiffs’ challenge: a medical, legal, and political scandal that will be studied for decades. Given the evidence we uncovered, it is no surprise the plaintiffs abandoned their challenge,” Marshall added.
Marshall said the standards of care that the plaintiffs were relying on to make their case were heavily influenced by lawyers and transgender activists in order to win lawsuits and sway policy decisions.
Writing in support of Tennessee’s similar ban, which is being challenged at the Supreme Court, Marshall told the high court: “The federal government, ‘social justice lawyers’ from prominent activist organizations, and self-appointed experts at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) conspired to abolish age limits for sterilizing chemical treatments and surgeries.” The Supreme Court is expected to announce a decision in that case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, before it recesses at the end of June.
Jonathan Scruggs, senior counsel and vice president of litigation strategy at Alliance Defending Freedom, which aided in Alabama’s case, commented: “Across the globe, we’re seeing a refreshing return to sanity after radical gender ideology devastated far too many young lives. … We applaud Alabama and the 24 other states that are following the science, protecting children, and working to stop an unsafe medical experiment that has gone on far too long.”