Chris Geidner on Substack

BREAKING: Kentucky ban on gender-affirming care for minors can be enforced during appeal, judge rules. In fallout from last weekend’s ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals from the Sixth Circuit, the district court judge who earlier granted an injunction against Kentucky’s bans on gender-affirming care to minors on Friday issued a stay of his ruling pending appeal. Friday’s order means that Kentucky’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors is enforceable now. The 2-1 decision from the Sixth Circuit on July 8 granting Tennessee’s request for a stay pending appeal in the challenge to that state’s ban is precedent for all district court judges within the circuit — which includes Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan, in addition to Tennessee. U.S. District Judge David Hale concluded that Tennessee and Kentucky’s bans are too similar for him to deny Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s request to stay the injunction pending appeal, given the 2-1 decision from the Sixth Circuit granting Tennessee’s similar request for a stay pending appeal. The challengers to Kentucky’s ban argued that the Kentucky law and circumstances were different enough that Hale didn’t need to follow the Sixth Circuit’s Tennessee-law decision. Hale — while still maintaining that his injunction ruling is correct — ultimately decided that he had no basis to deny the stay request given the similarities between the laws and what the Sixth Circuit panel concluded about the key legal question for a stay: “Likelihood of success on the merits.”