BOISE, Idaho — Enforcement of House Bill 71 has been blocked by a federal judge, just days before it was scheduled to go into effect, meaning minors who receive gender-affirming care in Idaho won't lose access at the start of 2024.
Related | Idaho House votes to criminalize gender-affirming care for kids
The law, which banned gender-affirming care for minors in the state of Idaho was signed into law in April.
The bill specifically criminalizes the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or transition-related therapy on minors in Idaho.
As Idaho News 6 reported earlier this year, according to the Idaho chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, no Idaho doctor had performed a transition surgery on a minor.
“This victory is significant for Idaho transgender youth and their parents, and will have an immediate positive impact on their daily lives,” said Leo Morales, Executive Director of the ACLU of Idaho, in a press release Wednesday morning. “This judicial decision is a much-needed ray of hope for trans people amid a years-long onslaught against their rights to access health care and ability to navigate the world around them.”
The ACLU filed the lawsuit that led to the injunction.
The Idaho Freedom Foundation, a conservative group says the news is "disappointing, and yet unsurprising" calling U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill, who issued the opinion, a leftist judge.
"All this to say, we’re not done fighting. The corrupt medical industrial complex, along with the corrupt judiciary, won’t stand in our way of accomplishing the mission of protecting young people from the Left’s diabolical agenda," Idaho Freedom Foundation president Wayne Hoffman said in a release.
Idaho's Attorney General Raúl Labrador, who was named in the lawsuit that led to this week's ruling, said they will appeal this decision. The ACLU also said they will continue to fight.
