Kansas Judge Temporarily Blocks Ban on Minors Accessing Chemical Treatments for Gender Dysphoria

State Attorney General Kris Kobach indicated that his office will appeal the injunction, according to local media reports.

Melanie Sun

Published: 5/17/2026, 5:15:06 PM EDT

Kansas Judge Temporarily Blocks Ban on Minors Accessing Chemical Treatments for Gender Dysphoria — Testosterone treatments for gender transitioning, in Northern California on Aug. 26, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

A Kansas judge has temporarily blocked a new law that banned minors in the state from accessing permanent chemical treatments for gender dysphoria.

Parents of the two teenagers petitioning the court in the case Loe v. Kansas were granted a temporary injunction by State District Judge Carl Folsom III of Douglas County on May 15.

The injunction blocks the enforcement of three core provisions in Senate Bill 63, which prohibited health care providers from prescribing puberty blockers or opposite sex hormones (testosterone or estrogen) to minors for the treatment of gender dysphoria. Gender-related surgical procedures on minors remain banned in the state as per the law.

Folsom acknowledged the complaints of the two families, who argued the teenagers had already started their treatments before the law was passed in February 2025 and that they were now forced to travel up to nine hours out-of-state if they wanted to continue the treatment, imposing a significant mental and physical burden on the teens and their families, in the form of unwanted puberty and mental health decline.

He said that the plaintiffs have shown a “substantial likelihood” of success on the merits of at least one of their three claims: irreparable harm in violation of their parental rights under Section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled that states can ban gender-related treatments for minors, ⁠the lawsuit argues that the Kansas law violates the state constitution.

The judge also noted the concrete harm to the minors based on the testimony of four pediatric and psychiatric experts for the plaintiffs. He said that experts for the state were lacking the relevant clinical experience of treating minors with gender dysphoria with the contested treatments, and accused them of cherry-picking studies.

Folsom said that the lack of injury to the defendant from the temporary injunction and the lack of adverse impact to the public interest in the form of potential constitutional limitation favored the injunction. He also said the injunction would apply to all similar challenges in the state.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Harper Seldin, who is representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement, “This is an enormous relief to ‌our clients ⁠and families across the state of Kansas.”

The Epoch Times contacted Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

“This is a stark example of judicial activism,” he said in a statement to media outlets. “The judge invented a new constitutional right out of whole cloth. Even though the Kansas Constitution says nothing about it, the judge created a new right of parents to obtain otherwise-illegal treatments for their children.”

Kobach indicated that his office will appeal the injunction.

If Folsom’s injunction is upheld, it would last for the duration of the lawsuit.

Reuters contributed to this article.

From The Epoch Times