Judge blocks Georgia’s ban on gender-affirming care for incarcerated people

Gender-affirming care for transgender people incarcerated in Georgia will remain accessible for now.

U.S. District Judge Victoria M. Calvert struck down the Georgia law last week that bans gender-affirming services, but Attorney General Chris Carr’s office appealed the ruling Monday, according to the Georgia Recorder.

“The Court does not hold that the Constitution requires all inmates receive hormone therapy if they want it. Rather, the Court requires healthcare decisions for prisoners to be made dispassionately, by physicians, based on individual determinations of medical need, and for reasons beyond the fact that the prisoners are prisoners,” Calvert wrote in the ruling.

Calvert had previously ordered a temporary block on the law in September. That block will now be permanent.

Senate Bill 185 passed during the 2025 legislative session and went into effect in May. The law required doctors to gradually decrease hormone therapy for transgender, incarcerated people and to provide them counseling. 

The bill’s author, state Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, told the Georgia Recorder that they anticipated  the Biden-nominated judge would make this decision.

“I stand with Attorney General Carr in the belief that, at the end of the day, this will be in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, and it will quickly be upheld, the law will be established as constitutional and right, and we will be moving on to things that are more important in Georgia,” he said.

Human rights advocates and groups have fought against the bill since it was introduced in the General Assembly.

Emily Early, associate director of the Southern Regional Office for the Center for Constitutional Rights, spoke at a House hearing in April arguing that the legislation is unconstitutional.

“These bills directly contravene 8th Amendment U.S. Constitutional protections as well as protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Gender dysphoria is a recognized, medical condition that many transgender people experience,” she said. “If adopted, Senate Bill 185 would impose blanket bans on the provision of gender-affirming care to incarcerated people with gender dysphoria, regardless of needs. These blanket bans have repeatedly been found unconstitutional because they show deliberate indifference to the needs of incarcerated people.”