Ohio Supreme Court denies attorney general’s request to enact healthcare ban for transgender youth

The Republican dominated Supreme Court of Ohio has rejected a request by Republican Attorney General Dave Yost to immediately institute Ohio’s ban on gender-affirming healthcare and transgender female athletes.

Such writs are only “granted in limited circumstances with great caution and restraint.”

Yost had asked the Court to reverse the temporary restraining order by Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael J. Holbrook, who ruled on April 16 that HB 68 violated Ohio’s “one-subject rule.”

“This Court is not able to discern the ‘primary’ subject of the bill,” Holbrook wrote in his decision about the bill addressing both healthcare and athletics. “The very title of the Act references two subjects.”

In the complaint, Yost alleged that Holbrook did not have the standing to make such a decision.

The Ohio Supreme Court categorically disagreed:

“To suggest that a trial-court judge does not have the right to declare a law facially unconstitutional undermines the central philosophy of why courts exist—to say what the law is.”

Yost further argued the temporary restraining order should apply exclusively to the families of transgender children named directly in the case.

There too, the court disagreed. 

“If a law that is facially unconstitutional may not be applied to an individual, then it may not be applied to anyone else.”

The temporary restraining order that was to expire on May 20 was extended until July 15, when a hearing will be held for arguments. Trans equality advocates note that Ohio families are scrambling during this interim period to initiate gender-affirming care, which then would be protected by a grandfather clause in HB 68. 

“Today’s ruling on HB 68 is a positive, but we encourage families to continue making contingency plans,” said Dara Adkison, newly appointed executive director of TransOhio.