Province appeals injunction against transgender care
The Alberta government has appealed an injunction granted by the courts that prevents the implementation of restrictions around health care for transgender minors in the province.
In late June, Justice Allison Kuntz concluded that the new rules, which passed late last year but were not fully in effect, raised serious Charter concerns that needed to be hashed out in court. She granted an injunction until those issues could be settled.
“The evidence shows that there is a benefit to the public in issuing the injunction because it will allow this marginalized group to continue receiving medical care from trusted doctors and a broader team of health professionals thereby avoiding the adverse consequences the Ban will have on them,” Kuntz wrote in her decision.
On July 25, the provincial government appealed the injunction to the Alberta Court of Appeal, arguing that Kuntz had erred in pausing the restrictions.
Last year, the Alberta government passed legislation that sought to ban doctors from providing treatment such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy to those under the age of 16 and enacted a total ban on gender-reassignment surgery for minors in the province.
In response to the changes, Egale Canada, an LGBTQ advocacy group, along with the Skipping Stone Foundation and five transgender youth, sued the Alberta government and sought a pause on the new rules until the courts could decide on their constitutionality.
At the time the injunction was issued, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith vowed to fight on.
“The court had said that they think that there will be irreparable harm if the law goes ahead. I feel the reverse,” Smith said on her radio program, Your Province, Your Premier, the day after Kuntz's decision was issued.
Asked about the decision to appeal Kuntz's ruling, Heather Jenkins, a spokesperson for Alberta Justice Minister Mickey Amery, said in an emailed statement that the legislation was passed to “protect children and youth when making life-altering and potentially irreversible adult decisions about their bodies.
“Alberta's government will continue to vigorously defend our position in court,” Jenkins wrote.
Amery was not made available for an interview.
Bennett Jensen, the director of legal at Egale Canada, said the advocacy group respects the right of the government to appeal the decision, but that the province was seeking to interfere with “the relationship between doctors and patients by seeking to ban medically necessary, evidence-based care for an already marginalized group of youth.”
“We urge the government to focus on the real challenges facing Alberta's health-care system. This is not one of them,” said Jensen in an emailed statement.
Last December, Smith had said that using the Notwithstanding Clause — which would allow the law to stand irrespective of what the courts concluded — is also an option before the government, although Smith maintains that the government can win in court and won't pre-emptively use the notwithstanding clause to shield its rules from court scrutiny.
The medical treatment of transgender minors has become a major policy debate since the release of the Cass Review in the U.K. in April 2024, which disputed some of the evidence surrounding the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors. The Alberta government moved to enact the most stringent restrictions in Canada on health care for transgender minors last fall.
“Prematurely encouraging or enabling children to alter their very biology or natural growth, no matter how well intentioned and sincere, poses a risk to that child's future that I, as premier, am not comfortable with permitting in our province,” Smith said last November.
The Alberta Medical Association has spoken out against the United Conservative government's restrictions, arguing that the treatment options provided — including the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy — follow the standards of care set out by the Canadian Paediatric Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“Governmental interference by legislating medical therapy options is inappropriate, unethical and represents serious government overreach into the practice of medicine and patient/family rights to autonomy in their health care decisions,” the group's pediatrics section wrote in a statement last November.