The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on April 26 challenging Tennessee’s newly-enacted law banning transgender medical procedures for children, arguing that the legislation violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
In a press release, the DOJ said it also asked the court to issue an immediate order to stop the law—Senate Bill 1, or SB 1—from going into effect on its scheduled date of July 1.
SB 1 (pdf) was signed into law by Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee on March 2 and bans health providers from performing medical procedures on minors for the purpose of either “enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or “treating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”…