High Court upholds puberty blockers ban

The High Court has upheld the last Government’s temporary ban on prescribing puberty blockers to gender-confused children in Great Britain.

Activist group TransActual UK, in partnership with the crowdfunding group Good Law Project, failed to overturn the Conservative Government’s emergency legislation, which protects under-18s from obtaining the drugs via private prescriptions from the UK or Europe.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who has said he will permanently extend the ban after it expires on 3 September, welcomed the court’s decision.

‘Powerful evidence’

Mrs Justice Lang DBE dismissed the activists’ challenge on all grounds, concluding that it was reasonable for the Government to act swiftly based on the highly respected Cass Review without consulting the public.

powerful scientific evidence in support of restrictions

She warned that a consultation period, which may have lasted up to six months, could have been used to give children puberty blockers so they would be allowed to continue to take them when the ban was renewed.

The judge concluded that Dr Hilary Cass’s findings about the “very substantial risks and very narrow benefits associated with the use of puberty blockers” amounted to “powerful scientific evidence in support of restrictions”.

Writing on X, JK Rowling commented: “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.”

Loophole

Ahead of the ruling, the former head of controversial trans-activist group Mermaids had boasted that she would evade the ban by importing puberty blockers via Northern Ireland.

Susie Green, who resigned from Mermaids in 2022 following an outcry over her “incapable” leadership, told the Belfast Telegraph that she has a network of Northern Irish families who are willing to receive private prescriptions for the drugs on behalf of gender-confused children in Britain.

The ban, which does not apply to the Province, does not prohibit families from transporting puberty blockers into Britain.

Although private clinics can still prescribe the drugs in Northern Ireland, they stopped being available to new NHS patients in 2020.