The language in the House budget is similar to President Donald Trump’s executive order earlier this year, saying the U.S. government will only recognize two sexes. Photo: Sharon McCutcheon

An Ohio court has partially overturned a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors in the state, arguing the ban violates the Health Care Freedom Amendment in the Ohio Constitution.

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel on the Tenth District Court of Appeals overturned a decision by a Franklin County judge that allowed House Bill 68 to take effect last year. Known as the “Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act,” HB 68 prevents doctors from providing medical care such as puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and some mental health counseling services. The Republican-backed bill also banned gender reassignment surgery for patients under 18, but such surgeries do not exist in Ohio, even before the passage of HB 68.

Republicans voted in early 2024 to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of HB 68. A lawsuit was then filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio (ACLU) on behalf of two families with transgender children. The case will now be sent back to the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas.

“We are gratified by the Court’s decision, which soundly rejects this interference of politicians with Ohioans’ bodily autonomy,” said Freda Levenson, legal director at the ACLU of Ohio. “Although this litigation will likely not end here, we remain fervently committed to preventing this egregious bill from ever again taking effect. The path towards protecting the rights and civil liberties of trans Ohioans goes on, and we will continue to hold the torch.”

Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, said he plans to appeal the ruling.

“This is a no brainer – we are appealing that decision and will seek an immediate stay. There is no way I’ll stop fighting to protect these unprotected children,” Yost said. “Ohio’s elected representatives properly passed legislation protecting children from irreversible chemical sex change procedures, and the trial court upheld the law. But now the 10th district court of appeals has just greenlighted these permanent medical interventions against minors.”

HB 68 also bans transgender women and girls from playing on female school sports teams, but the ACLU’s lawsuit did not include arguments on this ban.

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Understanding gender-affirming care
Gender-affirming care for kids is widely considered to be safe, effective and lifesaving by every major medical association in the country and all over the world, including the American Board of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the National Association of Social Workers, the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association, the Pediatric Endocrine Society and dozens more.

In May 2024, CityBeat sat down with a doctor who specializes in medical gender-affirming care, including youth. Dr. Laura Mintz is an Internal Medicine-Pediatrics physician in the PRIDE Network and Center for Health Equity, Engagement, Education, and Research (CHEEER) at the MetroHealth System in Cleveland.

“As people go through the process of gender-affirming care and coming into alignment, you see people just blossom and grow and become themselves, Mintz told CityBeat. “It is the most beautiful thing.”

Mintz said, like all healthcare, gender-affirming medical care is tailored to the needs of the patient, but all patients will start with parental conversation, psychological evaluation, extensive therapy, understanding of risks and benefits and social transition. Then, depending on the patient’s age, the conversation may continue with puberty blockers.

“The way that we have hormones at puberty is that it’s a cycle, where it’s a feedback loop, where the brain is signaling the organs, either the testicles or the ovaries, to spit out hormones,” Mintz says. “What [puberty] blockers do is they interrupt that cycle and suppress the activity in the brain. It just kind of shuts the whole thing down. So instead of adding any hormones in, essentially, this just puts a pause on those early puberty cycles where the estrogen and progesterone or the testosterone start being produced at the rates that produce puberty.”

Mintz told CityBeat that patients won’t start hormone therapy until around age 16, which is a general guideline from the Endocrine Society, but every patient is different.

Support from family and loved ones is crucial during this stage of gender-affirming medical care, according to Mintz.

“It is a whole family system plan to, again, make sure that the child feels good in their body, good in themselves, you know, here in the world as they understand themselves,” Mintz said.

Read the full interview with Dr. Mintz here.

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Follow CityBeat’s staff news writer Madeline Fening on Instagram. Got a news tip? Email mfening@citybeat.com.

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This article appears in Mar 5-18, 2025.