Community Shares of Greater Cincinnati has listed some potential project examples, like a trans youth engagement club, health care connection services and health care provider training led by trans youth. Photo: Katie Rainbow, Pexels

Transgender youth in Ohio are still barred from accessing gender-affirming care in the state, and their future access remains to be decided.

On Tuesday, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld House Bill 68, which is a ban on gender-affirming medical care for trans and non-binary youth. This Republican-backed ban includes hormone blockers, hormone replacement therapy and some counseling services. The bill also bans trans athletes from participating in middle, high school or college sports teams that align with their gender identity.

The ban was first put on pause in March by the 10th District Court of Appeals, which found the prohibition on puberty blockers and hormone therapy is unconstitutional. The court ordered the Franklin County trial court to enter a permanent injunction blocking it, but the state quickly filed a motion asking the appellate court to stay the injunction while the case moves its way to the Ohio Supreme Court for a full review. The appellate court denied the state’s motion, so the state filed a similar motion with the Ohio Supreme Court.

The justices approved Yost’s motion to stay the law on Tuesday, making it unclear if and when transgender youth in Ohio will be allowed to access gender-affirming care within state lines.

“It is a terrible shame that the Supreme Court of Ohio is permitting the state to evade compliance with the Ohio Constitution,” said Freda Levenson, Legal Director at the ACLU of Ohio. “Our clients have suffered tangible and irreparable harm during the eight months that HB 68 has been in place, including being denied essential health care in their home state. The Court of Appeals was correct that HB 68 violates at least two separate provisions of the Ohio Constitution. We will continue to fight this extreme ban as the case goes ahead before the Supreme Court of Ohio.”

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Dwayne Steward, Executive Director at Equality Ohio, said Ohioans can still voice their opposition to HB 68, even though it’s been approved by the governor.

“HB 68 is cruel and extreme, and our response must be unrelenting,” Steward said. “Know your legislators. Call them. Email them. Show up. Make it clear that marginalized Ohioans are not pawns in a political game—transgender Ohioans deserve medical care, like all Ohioans. The legal battle isn’t over yet, so please stay engaged with our social media channels, the ACLU of Ohio and other organizations across the state working to build lived and legal equity.”

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.

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“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.
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 Apr 30 – May 13, 2025.