Court Ruling Allows Arkansas to Enforce Ban on Gender-Affirming Care for Minors

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Arkansas can enforce its 2021 ban on gender-affirming care for minors, reversing a lower court decision that struck down the first-in-the-nation law as unconstitutional and following a June Supreme Court decision. 

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday that a federal district court had erred in striking down Arkansas’s Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act in 2023. U.S. District Judge Jay Moody ruled at the time that the law, adopted by the state Legislature in 2021 after former Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) vetoed it, discriminates against transgender people and poses “immediate and irreparable harm” to trans youth. 

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