In the latest showdown on the contentious debate surrounding transgender youth healthcare rights, the Texas Supreme Court has heard arguments against a state law that's put a hard stop on puberty blockers and hormone therapy treatments. Passed last year, the controversial Senate Bill 14 bans doctors from providing these gender-affirming treatments to transgender minors and threatens medical licenses for non-compliance, as reported by KXAN.

On Tuesday, legal counsels exchanged verbal blows over a landmark law that critics claim tramples on parental rights and discriminates against transgender children. Facing legal pushback from a coalition of five families with transgender kids and three doctors, the judicial rumble peeled back layers on a legislation that has already seen a Travis County district court judge declaring it unconstitutional. This decision erupted into a tug of war escalated by the attorney general's office, which effectively put SB 14 into force last September, according to The Texas Tribune.

Representatives for the state, such as Natalie Thompson, argue that Texas has every right to regulate medical practices that could adversely affect children's development. "The statute is narrowly tailored to protecting children from interventions that interfere with their growth and development and have irreversible physical effects, all without proven mental health benefit," Thompson said, as stated in KXAN. 

In contrast, lawyer Kennon Wooten fought back, standing up for the plaintiffs by seeking to revert the case to lower court felts for a full trial. "In attempting to justify Senate Bill 14 in this case, the state has disregarded widely-recognized benefits of the care that Senate Bill 14 bans and the risk of doing nothing to treat gender dysphoria," Wooten argued, invoking the grave realities of untreated gender dysphoria, as per KXAN.