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Judge Michael Holbrook ruled that state legislators have a legitimate interest in regulating medical “treatments” of minors, especially when those treatments are experimental, risky, and irreversible.
A county judge has upheld the Ohio legislature’s right to restrict gender transition treatments in minors and to prohibit males from competing in girls’ sports.
In December 2023, the Ohio House and Senate passed the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act banning cross-sex hormone treatments and gender transition surgeries in minors. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed the legislation soon thereafter, but the legislature quickly overrode his veto.
The law was challenged in court where Franklin County Judge Michael Holbrook denied a request to block the law from going into effect, finding that the state has a “legitimate government interest in protecting the health and safety of its citizens.”
He reasoned that “the medical care banned carries with it undeniable risk and permanent outcomes. Indeed, countries once confident in the administration of gender affirming care to minors are now reversing their position as a result of the significant inconsistencies in results and potential side effects of the care.”
Holbrook wrote that while parents do have the right to make decisions about the care of their children, “This Court, however, cannot overlook the competing critical role State and federal governments have long played in regulating health and welfare, which explains why their efforts receive ‘a strong presumption of validity.’”
Citing Washington v. Glucksberg, in which the Supreme Court found there is no constitutional right to euthanasia, Holbrook wrote that the same reasoning applies in this case.
“It [the Supreme Court] allowed the State to prohibit individuals from receiving the drugs they wanted, and their physicians wished to provide, all despite the ‘personal and profound’ liberty interests at stake and all despite the reality that the drugs at issue often could be used for other purposes. The Court reasoned that there was no ‘deeply rooted’ tradition of permitting individuals or their doctors to override contrary state medical laws. The right to refuse medical treatment in some settings, it reasoned, cannot be ‘transmuted’ into a right to obtain treatment, even if both involved ‘personal and profound’ decisions.”
Holbrook argued that this allowed debate to proceed rather than having it shut down by the Court. “To be sure, the Glucksberg decision did not curtail the ‘earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality, and practicality of physician-assisted suicide.’ Instead, the decision ‘permit[ted] this debate to continue, as it should in a democratic society.’”
Holbrook ruled,
“Upon careful review and consideration of the evidence, the Court finds the Health Care Ban reasonably limits parents’ rights to make decisions about their children’s medical care consistent with the State’s deeply rooted legitimate interest in the regulation of medical profession and medical treatments. This limitation is especially appropriate when the General Assembly has determined the care regulated is experimental and its risks ‘far outweigh any benefit at this stage of clinical study.’”
After the ruling was announced, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s communications director released a statement, saying, “The Attorney General applauds the trial court’s decision. This case has always been about the legislature’s authority to enact a law to protect our children from making irreversible medical and surgical decisions about their bodies. The law doesn’t say ‘no’ forever; it simply says ‘not now’ while the child is still growing.”
The ACLU of Ohio, which filed the lawsuit, plans to appeal the Holbrook’s decision.
The question of whether or not states can ban gender treatments in children has been a controversial topic in recent years, with courts split on the answer. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, will soon provide clarity. In late June, the justices announced that they will hear the Department of Justice’s challenge of laws passed by Kentucky and Tennessee that ban the use of drugs or surgery to change the sex of children.
Of course, parents have the right to direct the care of their children. Parental rights are a bedrock principle of a functioning society. Yet those on the left seem to only want parents to have the right to alter and mutilate their child’s body for the purpose of a “gender transition.”
Parental rights aren’t without limit. A parent has no right to irreparably harm their child.
The state, through voters, is allowed to make laws governing medical practices.
Ohio has determined that the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital mutilation harms children.
Ohio’s findings are warranted. Numerous reviews, studies, testimonies, and other evidence has demonstrated that trying to turn a child into a different sex is harmful to the child. Several nations that once wholeheartedly supported gender treatments no longer allow them for children.
We would never say that a parent has the right to have a child’s arm amputated because the child thinks they would like to have a robotic arm instead. Why would we allow them to have a child’s genitals marred or their breasts removed because they would like to be a different sex?
And if the state legislature doesn’t have the authority to protect a child from being mutilated and permanently altered, who can they protect?
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