In a seismic ruling Monday, the UK High Court upheld the British government’s ban on puberty blockers, citing a study that found “very substantial risks and very narrow benefits” of early puberty suppression.
The Cass Review, commissioned by England’s National Health Service (NHS), concluded that there is “weak evidence” to justify the practice of prescribing hormones that pause the development of puberty, and that for the majority of young people, “a medical pathway may not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress.”
The Court accepted that the former Health Secretary was entitled to rely on the Cass review in making the emergency order, last March. The ban restricts the NHS from providing puberty blockers at the nation’s gender identity clinics and also prevents it from being prescribed by private suppliers. Puberty blockers can still be used in clinical trials, the Associated Press reported.
The ban was challenged by TransActual, a trans activist organization and an unnamed youth. The Court dismissed the group’s assertions that a lack of “gender affirming care,” would lead to a rise in suicide as unfounded.
Justice Beverley Lang said in her decision that young patients undergoing such treatment have been caught up in a “stormy social discourse.”
The decision is a massive setback for TransActual, which is led by the transgender activist Chay Brown.
According to The Telegraph, Brown’s group had successfully “infiltrated and influenced policy” at NHS.
Messages seen by The Telegraph reveal TransActual, a lobbying group, has promoted its “bespoke training and consultancy” to hundreds of employees at NHS England, which runs the country’s health service.
“It’s really dangerous,” a source told the British paper. The group had campaigned at NHS for “privacy and dignity, but only if you are transgender,” the source said.
In a bizarre and incomprehensible statement following the decision, Brown said the government had somehow “weaponized” “young trans people”
“We are seriously concerned about the safety and welfare of young trans people in the U.K.,” Brown said. “Over the last few years, they have come to view the U.K. medical establishment as paying lip service to their needs and all too happy to weaponize their very existence in pursuit of a now-discredited culture war.”
The ban was put in place by the UK’s Conservative government that was recently voted out of power, but the new Labor government appears likely to make it permanent.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “Children’s healthcare must be evidence-led. We must therefore act cautiously and with care when it comes to this vulnerable group of young people.”
J.K. Rowling, a top critic of transgender policies in the UK, applauded the decision in a comment on X: “We seem, at last, to be moving back to treatment for vulnerable youth based on evidence-based medicine, as opposed to the unevidenced claims of ideological lobby groups,” Rowling said.