The U.S. Supreme Court has granted a request by Republican Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador to lift a lower court's temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing its felony ban on gender-affirming care for minors, The Hill reported. The three liberal justices dissented.

The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) of Idaho clarified things further, stating on its website that the court issued a partial stay against the injunction, "allowing the law to be enforced against families and medical providers other than the plaintiffs in this case while that case proceeds in the District Court."

Last year, Idaho became the second state, after Alabama, to make providing gender-affirming health care to minors a felony. (Violators can receive up to a decade in prison and $5,000 in fines.)

In December, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill blocked Idaho's law, known as the Vulnerable Child Protection Act. Labrador appealed Winmill's decision in January; however, a three-judge panel for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied it in a one-sentence order. In February, Labrador asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take emergency action allowing Idaho to enforce the law. He contended that district courts cannot prevent states from enforcing laws against individuals who are not directly involved in litigation.

In a joint statement, the ACLU and ACLU of Idaho said, "While the Court's ruling importantly does not touch upon the constitutionality of this law, it is nonetheless an awful result for transgender youth and their families across the state. [The] ruling allows the state to shut down the care that thousands of families rely on while sowing further confusion and disruption. Nonetheless, [the] result only leaves us all the more determined to defeat this law in the courts entirely, making Idaho a safer state to raise every family."

—Andrew Davis