For Immediate Release:
May 19, 2025
For press inquiries only, contact:
Amanda Priest (334) 322-5694
William Califf (334) 604-3230
(Montgomery, Ala.) – Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall led a 24-state brief supporting Ohio’s law prohibiting experimental sex-change procedures for minors. The brief urged the Ohio Supreme Court to review a lower court decision that enjoined enforcement of Ohio’s law based on its conclusion that the law conflicted with purported standards of care promulgated by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).
In the brief, Attorney General Marshall argued that the state court of appeals got things backward by deferring to WPATH rather than the state legislature on matters of medical regulation. According to Marshall, it is the role of government to regulate private interest groups and medical providers, not the other way around.
Marshall also argued that the medical interest group that the Ohio court of appeals deferred to—WPATH—was particularly untrustworthy. Discussing evidence uncovered through court-ordered discovery in Alabama’s case defending its own law prohibiting sex-change procedures for minors, the Attorney General explained that evidence revealed that WPATH intentionally crafted its “Standards of Care” document to advance political and ideological interest at the expense of evidence-based medicine and patient welfare.
“Even after Alabama uncovered the devastating court-ordered discovery that dismantled the thinly veiled medical guidelines, the Ohio courts still cherrypicked amicus briefs filed in another case to find that WPATH’s guidelines are the prevailing standards of care that Ohio somehow became powerless to disagree with,” stated Attorney General Marshall. “The court should have instead deferred to the government’s regulation protecting vulnerable children who deserve so much better than WPATH’s faulty ‘standards.’”
The Alabama-led coalition filed the brief urging the Ohio Supreme Court to grant review of the decision by the Ohio Tenth District Court of Appeals.
In Alabama’s now dismissed case, Boe v. Marshall, discovery revealed that key medical organizations like WPATH misled parents, promoted unproven treatments as settled science, and ignored growing international concern over the use of sex-change procedures to treat gender dysphoria in minors. Alabama’s investigation also uncovered internal communications showing that WPATH’s “Standards of Care” document was drafted with input from lawyers and advocacy organizations to win lawsuits and influence policy decisions.
Attorney General Marshall has not only successfully defended Alabama’s statute but also led nationally by filing key legal briefs in support of similar laws in other states, highlighting the evidence uncovered during its own discovery.
The brief was filed on behalf of 24 states: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.
For more on Alabama’s work in Boe v. Marshall and similar cases, visit: https://www.alabamaag.gov/boe-v-marshall.
Click here to read the full brief.
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