(BOISE) – Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, with the assistance of attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom and Cooper & Kirk, filed an emergency motion Wednesday asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to halt a lower court’s order and allow Idaho to enforce its law protecting children from harmful and experimental drugs and procedures.
“I’ve witnessed the devastating consequences of drugs and procedures used on children with gender dysphoria. And it’s a preventable tragedy. Yet activist groups and professionals with large financial interests continue to push harmful puberty-blocking drugs and body-altering surgeries that can cause permanent sterilization on children too young to understand the long-term implications for their lives,” Attorney General Labrador said. “The State has a duty to protect and support all children and that’s why I’m proud to defend Idaho’s law that ensures no child is subjected to these life-altering drugs and procedures. Children suffering gender dysphoria deserve love, support, and medical care rooted in biological reality.”
“Idaho enacted the Vulnerable Child Protection Act after witnessing a ten-fold increase of minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria—a misalignment of a child’s sex and the child’s perception of it. Concerned with that precipitous increase—and based on substantial medical data showing harm from medical treatments that make changes to the body rather than address the underlying causes of dysphoria—Idaho’s [law] restricted the irreversible and body-altering medical procedures intended to block children’s natural biological development: cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and surgeries,” the motion for stay filed in Poe v. Labrador explains. “Idaho was not alone in this. Twenty-two other states passed similar laws. And the European health authorities that pioneered these procedures later published systematic reviews highlighting their risks and denying their benefits.”
The Vulnerable Child Protection Act, enacted last year, protects children from dangerous and often irreversible drugs and procedures that block natural development and remove healthy body parts. Activists sued the state, and a district court blocked Idaho from enforcing its law. The Idaho Attorney General’s Office has appealed to the 9th Circuit, asking it to allow the law to take effect while the case proceeds.