Two transgender adolescents and their families are challenging Ohio’s House Bill 68, a law passed in January 2024 that prohibits gender-affirming medical care that is widely accepted to treat gender dysphoria, helping alleviate the distress of gender dysphoria and significantly improving patients’ mental health and well-being. Such treatment is supported by leading medical experts and all major U.S. medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Ohio, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the law firm Covington & Burling LLP filed a lawsuit challenging several Ohio laws that together force abortion patients to wait a minimum of 24 hours after receiving unnecessary state-mandated information in person before they can access their desired abortion care. These laws violate Ohio’s constitutional right to reproductive freedom passed on November 7, 2023. Ohio is one of four states that have amended their constitutions to enshrine a fundamental right to abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Ohio clinics must maintain an ambulatory surgical facility license to provide procedural abortion. Ohio imposes medically unnecessary and burdensome licensing requirements that make it difficult, if not impossible, for abortion clinics to maintain their licenses.