Judge orders Georgia to continue hormone therapy for transgender inmates

Federal Judge Orders Georgia to Continue Hormone Therapy for Transgender Inmates

A federal judge has issued a permanent ruling requiring Georgia’s prison system to maintain gender-affirming care for transgender inmates, directly challenging a state law that sought to end such treatments. U.S. District Judge Victoria Marie Calvert determined that denying hormone therapy to inmates violates their constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

In her ruling, Judge Calvert emphasized that gender dysphoria constitutes a serious medical need. “Plaintiffs, through their experts, have presented evidence that a blanket ban on hormone therapy constitutes grossly inadequate care for gender dysphoria and risks imminent injury,” Calvert wrote.

The decision finalizes a preliminary order issued in September that temporarily blocked implementation of the law passed by Georgia’s legislature in May. That law prohibited the use of state funds for hormone therapy, gender-transition surgery, or other treatments that alter sexual characteristics.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has already filed notice to appeal the ruling to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Carr, a Republican candidate for governor, has pledged to fight the lawsuit “all the way to the Supreme Court,” describing the case as “absurd.”

The Georgia Department of Corrections had identified over 340 inmates diagnosed with gender dysphoria as of mid-August, with 107 receiving hormone therapy as of June 30. The state began providing such care in 2016 following a previous lawsuit also represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the current case.

The controversial measure deeply divided Georgia lawmakers during the 2025 legislative session, with most House Democrats walking out to protest the final vote. Despite this opposition, Governor Brian Kemp signed the bill into law in May, after which prison officials began developing plans to gradually reduce and ultimately eliminate hormone therapy for affected inmates by October.

Senator Randy Robertson, the Republican sponsor of Senate Bill 185, defended the law by arguing, “It is not a health care issue that should be the responsibility of the taxpayers.”

In her ruling, Judge Calvert rejected studies presented by the state attempting to argue that denying hormone therapy doesn’t meet the legal standard of “deliberate indifference.” She also dismissed testimony from prison system physicians, noting they weren’t making medical determinations but merely following the law’s directives.

“Defendants cannot deny medical care and then defeat an injunction by saying nothing bad has happened yet,” Calvert stated, finding that the counseling and monitoring promised by the state would be inadequate.

The Georgia case represents just one front in the ongoing national legal battles over transgender rights. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors. The Trump administration has actively sought to restrict transgender rights through various measures, including suing Maine for not complying with a push to ban transgender athletes in girls’ sports, blocking federal spending on gender-affirming medical care for those under 19, and implementing policies to remove transgender service members from the military.

State attorneys argued that Judge Calvert ignored recent court decisions, including the Tennessee ban and a recent 11th Circuit ruling that determined a Georgia county wasn’t required to pay for a sheriff deputy’s gender-transition surgery.

“It is crystal clear the state legislatures have wide deference to enact laws regulating sex-change procedures like the cross-sex hormonal interventions at issue in this case,” state lawyers wrote in a November filing.

As the case moves to the appeals process, it highlights the growing tensions between state legislative efforts to restrict transgender healthcare and federal court rulings that have frequently found such restrictions unconstitutional when applied to individuals already in state custody.