This Supreme Court Decision Might End Up Displacing Families For Good

Future access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth is in the hands of the Supreme Court — and the stakes couldn't be higher.

High school senior Kyle has visited Chicago three times over the last two years. The 17-year-old has grown to love the Windy City, the birthplace of one of his favorite indie rock bands, Fall Out Boy. He plans to apply to a prestigious arts college there this fall.

But the New Orleans teen and his family didn’t make these journeys for fun. Chicago was one of the only places where Kyle could continue to access testosterone, part of the gender-affirming care he needed to alleviate his intense feelings of gender dysphoria, after his home state of Louisiana’s ban on care went into effect in January 2024.

“I describe it as getting caught up with other boys my age,” Kyle told HuffPost about taking testosterone. He’s enjoyed hearing his voice deepen and watching his face become more square.

Kyle considers himself lucky as one of the few trans kids in his community that is able to continue accessing care by traveling out of state. He was able to get a $500 grant from the Campaign for Southern Equality, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, to make the trips more manageable. Without financial resources or family support, the vast majority of his trans friends are instead forced to wait until they’re adults to start the process of medically transitioning.

HuffPost spoke with three families of transgender youth — all of whom requested to use pseudonyms or to use first names to protect their privacy — who shared stories underscoring the lengths to which they’ve gone and the distances they’ve traveled in order to access gender-affirming care for their children in the aftermath of a tidal wave of state-level bans on this care.