ACLU Sues Arkansas Over Anti-Trans Law Limiting Health Care For Youth

The suit is the first major challenge to laws targeting trans young people being pushed in Republican-led state legislatures nationwide.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the state of Arkansas on Tuesday over its new law that bars transgender kids from receiving essential medical care, saying the measure will cause “catastrophic harm” to one of the nation’s most vulnerable groups. The civil rights organization filed the lawsuit on behalf of four families and two doctors with transgender patients, asking a federal judge to strike down the law. It’s the first major challenge to state laws enacted in a broader nationwide effort by Republicans to target trans youth. “Transgender children in crisis shouldn’t have to turn to the courts to ensure that they can get the health care that their doctors and parents agree they need,” James Esseks, director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, wrote Tuesday. “But that’s the reality that anti-LGBTQ forces have created as part of their campaign of attacks on transgender youth.”