Washington University announced Monday that their physicians at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital will no longer prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to minors for the purposes of gender transition.
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“We are disheartened to have to take this step,” the university stated Monday. “However, Missouri’s newly enacted law regarding transgender care has created a new legal claim for patients who received these medications as minors.”
“This legal claim creates unsustainable liability for health-care professionals and makes it untenable for us to continue to provide comprehensive transgender care for minor patients without subjecting the university and our providers to an unacceptable level of liability,” the university wrote.
The law, which took effect Aug. 28, outlawed “gender-affirming” medications and surgery for minors, with exceptions for those who were already undergoing those treatments before the law came into force.
Washington University will refer patients currently receiving these treatments from their Transgender Center to other providers.
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St. Louis Judge Steven Ohmer struck down an injunction previously requested by families, doctors, and LGBTQ activist organizations which claimed the law was unconstitutional on Aug. 25., saying that the proposed injunction was “unpersuasive and not likely to succeed.”
The requested injunction claimed that the law unlawfully discriminated against transgender people “by denying them medically necessary care and insurance coverage because of their sex and because of their transgender status.”
The Missouri Attorney General’s Office denied these claims, saying that the law “applies evenly to boys and girls.”
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sent a letter in May to the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners vowing to take “any legal action necessary” against the city if its police department did not enforce the ban on gender transition treatments.
