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Enter Alliance Defending Freedom. The state appealed the district court’s ruling temporarily blocking the ban the Ninth Circuit, and they failed there, as well. But then ADF joined the case, assisting Idaho attorney general Raúl Labrador in filing an emergency motion to the Supreme Court, seeking to enforce the law against everyone who wasn’t suing them. They framed this as a narrow question about temporary injunctions, perhaps an easier fight to win considering their losses so far. However, in ADF’s request to the Supreme Court, they elevated pseudoscience to argue for the urgency of enforcement. They made use of a discredited paper that claimed young trans people were the products of “social contagion.” ADF also erroneously contended, citing an opinion piece in The New York Times by columnist Pamela Paul, that “more and more minors” are “voicing their regret for taking this path.” But perhaps it is no surprise that in the course of defending a law that disregards trans youth identities, the law’s defenders continue to cast doubt on them. In some respects, ADF has won only on a technical question about temporary injunctions, not on the core question of whether the bans are constitutional. But it’s a win for ADF, who, as a new brief from the Center for American Progress outlined, may well try to repeat this strategy in other states and on other concerns of bodily autonomy.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on the temporary injunction will have a massive impact, even if Idaho should go on to lose when the case is actually considered on the merits. The truth is, the pace of anti-trans laws being enacted may be slowing this year. Other legal challenges to healthcare bans are proceeding. However, should those bans go into effect, even temporarily, young people who were using puberty blockers will have to stop, and puberty will begin. Young people who were using hormones will have to stop, and the effect of the hormones will be blunted. Families who leave the state in order to protect their trans kids will have already had to uproot and upend these kids’ lives in the process.

The legal challenges to these bans are premised on the harm caused by the bans. That harm involves denying access to time-sensitive medical care. If the bans are enforced while the legal challenges are considered, that harm will have already occurred. Trans kids lives’ cannot just be put on hold, pending some ruling someday.