Two groups file lawsuit attempting to block MO attorney general’s transgender healthcare restrictions

Two groups have filed to block the Missouri Attorney General’s restrictions on transgender health care. 

Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ legal organization, and the ACLU of Missouri, are asking a court to block Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s emergency rule, which is scheduled to begin Thursday. 

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Southampton Community Healthcare, the families of two transgender people, along with two others. 

Bailey’s limits on hormone therapy and gender transitions are for minors and adults. 

Missouri Attorney General Bailey says his emergency rule clarifies that gender transition interventions are experimental and he says state law already bans performing experimental procedures unless certain conditions are met. 

In a news release, Gillian Wilcox, with the ACLU, says the attorney general’s “dangerous and unlawful twisting of Missouri’s consumer protection laws corrupt our health care system by inserting the government into the medical decisions of people and their doctors in order to play politics at the expense of life-saving medical care.”