A group of seven Georgia parents and children filed a suit in state court Friday attempting to block the state’s ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors, including hormone therapy, surgery and other “irreversible procedures.” The families were assisted in filing the suit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The suit alleges that the law, SB 140, infringes upon the parents’ 14th Amendment constitutional rights to due process, including their right to determine how to parent their children. The filing states, “The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the rights of parents to make decisions ‘concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.”

The families also allege that the law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by discriminating based on sex and gender. The suit states:

The Health Care Ban singles out transgender minors and prohibits them from obtaining medically necessary treatment based on their sex and transgender status. Importantly, the Ban’s discriminatory purpose is carried out by prohibiting the use of medically necessary treatment only when that treatment is provided to transgender youth who did not begin treatment with hormone therapy before July 1, 2023, not when provided to non-transgender youth.

Attorneys with multiple human rights organizations, including the SPLC, HRC and the ACLU, also filed a memorandum requesting the law be temporarily blocked until the suit is finished.

Anna Zoe, a pseudonym for one of the parents involved in the suit, commented on the consequences of SB 140 to her family, saying:

It is vital that, as a family, we have agency in our own medical decisions that are in the best interest of our child—that includes gender-affirming care. Our sweet, bright, and creative daughter has been a girl for as long as she can remember. Her identity as a girl is as natural and innate as any of the other attributes she was born with—blue eyes, left-handedness, and an infectious laugh. Access to gender-affirming care will allow our daughter to develop into the person she has always wanted to be, and the person she has always been inside.

State Senator Carden Summers, the primary legislative sponsor of SB 140, defended the law, saying, “I think that most reasonable people will feel that surgery and sex change hormones, which are irreversible for minors, is not an appropriate procedure.” However, physicians say many results of puberty blockers and hormone therapy treatment, both blocked by the law, are reversible.

Gender-affirming surgeries are rare for minors, with one study in Louisiana finding that no minors that were enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program had received surgeries as part of their care between 2017 and 2021, despite a 200% increase in gender dysphoria diagnoses among Medicaid-enrolled youth.

The lawsuit comes as transgender healthcare bans have been struck down in Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Indiana, Alabama and Florida. Oklahoma agreed to halt its ban in May as legal proceedings continue. The ACLU has ongoing lawsuits in Idaho and Nebraska challenging both states’ gender-affirming care bans.

According to HRC, 30.9% of transgender youth live in states that have passed bans on some level of gender-affirming care.