Missouri officials abruptly terminated an unusual emergency rule proposed by the Republican attorney general that would have placed limits on transgender care for minors and some adults.
The move was announced without explanation on the Missouri Secretary of State’s website.
The rule pushed by Attorney General Andrew Bailey would have required adults and children to undergo more than a year of therapy and fulfill other requirements before they could receive gender-affirming treatments such as puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery.
Legal experts and transgender advocates have said the rule would have made Missouri the first state in the country to restrict gender-affirming care for adults and the first to enact such restrictions through emergency rules rather than a new law.
Bailey often spoke of the need to protect children from what he refers to as experimental treatment. But after announcing the rules, he said they were designed to “protect all patients” regardless of their age.
House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, D-Springfield, said in a statement that Missouri should not have an attorney general “who persecutes innocent Missourians for political gain.”
Bailey had sought to implement the rule on April 27. But the ACLU of Missouri filed a lawsuit to stop it, arguing that Bailey bypassed the Legislature and did not have the authority to regulate health care through Missouri’s consumer-protection law. #Queer Up Health