Legal challenge to trans youth healthcare in High Court

Anti-trans activists have brought a legal challenge against a clinical trial examining healthcare for young trans people to the High Court, furthering their attacks on the care offered to this vulnerable community.

Just before the general election in 2024, the Tories rushed through a ban on the prescription of puberty blockers to young trans people – a ban made permanent by Wes Streeting after Labour took power. But the Cass Review recommended a clinical trial to examine the evidence.

The controversial Bayswater Support Group have teamed up with claimants including Keira Bell, whose legal challenge to young trans healthcare in 2020 was overturned on appeal, following an intervention by Good Law Project. In a case funded by a group with links to the far right, they are asking the High Court for permission to challenge the NHS Pathways trial.

The claimants suggest that the trial may be unlawful because prescribing puberty blockers to the young people in the trial would fail to safeguard their “rights, safety and wellbeing”. But this isn’t what the evidence suggests – and puberty blockers remain a standard treatment for young trans people across the world.

If the High Court allows this challenge to go forward, Good Law Project will support the trans youth charity, Gendered Intelligence, with an application to intervene – defending the rights of young trans people who should be able to access puberty-blocking treatment. Important decisions about gender-affirming care should be made by young people and their clinicians. Not by politicians or activists who fight against trans rights. 

Transphobic attacks which restrict gender-affirming care can have a huge impact on young trans people. One parent told Gendered Intelligence that when treatment was “taken away” from their child it was “devastating”. And another said they were afraid to take their child to NHS appointments, “because I don’t know how they’ll be treated”.

But the most important voices to listen to are those of trans young people themselves.

“Trans young people should be protected and treated as people,” one young person told Gendered Intelligence, “not discussed like objects. No-one talks about the harm caused by not recognising or supporting someone with their gender identity.”

Young trans people deserve control over their own bodies and access to appropriate healthcare – backed by decades of international evidence proving these treatments are standard, safe, and important. We will defend access to that healthcare from political attacks.