A lawsuit filed today seeks to block Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s restrictions on transgender health care.
The petition, filed in St. Louis County Court by Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, seeks a temporary restraining order to halt the rules Bailey promulgated through an emergency order on April 13.
The order is scheduled to take effect Thursday and would effectively stop patients from receiving gender-affirming care unless they meet several hard-to-meet requirements.
Patients would be prohibited from receiving “gender transition interventions" unless they participate in 15 hours of therapy, have been screened for autism, have “resolved” any mental health illnesses and have documented proof of gender dysphoria for at least three years, among other requirements.
Bailey’s order bucks the opinions of most major medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and World Medical Association, which support gender-affirming care.
Lambda Legal and the ACLU promptly promised to fight Bailey’s emergency order after he announced it.
In their petition against Bailey’s order, legal advocates argued the attorney general had exceeded his authority and had attempted to deny transgender children and adults their “fundamental rights to obtain medically necessary care.”
“Never before has an attorney general sought to regulate the practice of medicine, let alone in this way, in Missouri,” the petition reads. “Yet, usurping authority and powers outside those of his office, Defendant claims expansive authority under the [Missouri Merchandising Practices Act] to regulate the practice of medicine.”
The lawsuit, Southampton Community Healthcare v. Bailey, was filed on behalf of Southampton Community Healthcare, Kelly Storck, a licensed clinical social worker; Logan Casey, a 36-year-old transgender man; and the families of two young transgender people, according to a release from Lambda Legal.
Southampton Healthcare is a primary care clinic located in south St. Louis. On the clinic’s website, providers wrote they will continue to provide gender-affirming care for patients and prescribe hormone replacement therapy without interruption.
“Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s order is a baseless and discriminatory attempt to limit the healthcare options for transgender individuals, who already face several barriers accessing necessary and life-saving medical care,” Southampton Community Healthcare’s Dr. Samuel Tochtrop said in a statement.
Bailey has championed his emergency order as a way to protect children — though the order would also affect adults.
Should the suit against him be successful, the emergency order would be declared invalid.
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