ST. LOUIS–On the day that the Missouri House passed legislation that would ban medical treatment for most transgender children, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced that emergency rules regarding current transgender medical care would go into effect April 27.
By law, the rules announced Thursday must first be reviewed by the Secretary of State's office.
Citing what his office called the experimental nature of medical interventions and their side effects, Bailey said Thursday that “state law already prohibits performing those procedures in the absence of substantial guardrails that ensure informed consent and adequate access to mental health care.”
The emergency regulation bans transgender transition treatments without the following:
Ensuring all individuals have access to mental health treatment including a full psychological or psychiatric assessment, consisting of not fewer than 15 separate, hourly sessions over the course of not fewer than 18 months.
Ensuring that any existing mental health comorbidities of the patient have been treated and resolved.
Tracking all adverse effects that arise from any course of covered gender transition intervention for all patients beginning the first day of intervention and continuing for a period of not fewer than 15 years.
Ensuring that the patient has received a comprehensive screening to determine whether the patient has autism.
Obtaining and keeping on file informed written consent.
Read the full set of regulations here
The emergency rules will take effect April 27, 2023 and will be in place until February 6, 2024.
The rules come as the Attorney General investigates a whistleblower complaint from a former staff member at the Washington University Transgender Clinic at Children’s Hospital.
Jamie Reed made several claims, including that puberty blocking medications and cross-sex hormones were being prescribed without an individual assessment and in some cases without parental consent.
Bailey asked the clinic for a moratorium on prescriptions for puberty blocker medications for children in February.
Washington University and BJC declined to put that moratorium in place but said it was putting additional oversight in place while it conducted its own review.
Representatives for the school and the hospital could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.
The ACLU of Missouri and Lambda Legal released a joint statement saying this emergency regulation will have a "drastically negative impact" on transgender youth. Here is more of their statement:
“The Attorney General’s so-called emergency rule is based on distorted, misleading, and debunked claims and ignores the overwhelming body of scientific and medical evidence supporting this care as well as the medical experts and doctors who work with transgender people every day. This rule is a shocking attempt to exploit Missouri’s consumer protection laws in order to play politics with life-saving medical care."
Bailey, who was appointed to the office by Gov. Mike Parson after Eric Schmitt's election to the U.S. Senate in November, is running for the office in 2024.
The investigation and the rules announced Thursday were part of his stump speech Thursday night in Montgomery County, where he spoke to a Republican Party Lincoln Days audience, describing what's been alleged at the Washington University clinic as "mutilating children.....woke left-wing ideology masquerading as medicine," and calling the described the procedures taking place there and elsewhere in the state as "child abuse".
In an interview following the event, Bailey said state law gives his office the authority to author the regulations and that Missouri Supreme Court has "validated the expansive nature of that rulemaking authority."
On Thursday, the House gave final passage to a bill that would ban transgender medical treatment for minors, with some exceptions. Unlike a version that passed the Senate and is now in a House committee, the House version does not have a four-year sunset provision and would not “grandfather” existing patients.
Both versions have an effective date of August 28, 2023 if signed by Gov. Mike Parson.