A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction against Georgia’s law that cut off hormone therapy and other gender-affirming treatment for transgender people in state prisons, finding that the statute violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling comes months after Senate Bill 185 took effect and barred state money from being used for hormone therapy, gender-transition procedures, and cosmetic interventions meant to alter sexual characteristics. The law also prevented transgender inmates from paying for that care themselves while incarcerated.
U.S. District Judge Victoria Marie Calvert concluded that cutting off this treatment fails to meet basic constitutional standards for medical care behind bars. “The court finds that there is no genuine dispute of fact that gender dysphoria is a serious medical need,” she wrote. “Plaintiffs, through their experts, have presented evidence that a blanket ban on hormone therapy constitutes grossly inadequate care for gender dysphoria and risks imminent injury.” Her order requires Georgia prisons to continue providing hormones to people who had already been receiving them and to allow other incarcerated people diagnosed as needing hormone therapy to start treatment.
SB 185 was signed in May by Governor Brian Kemp and took effect in July. The Center for Constitutional Rights filed suit in August on behalf of five transgender inmates, arguing that the measure violated the Eighth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause because it singled out treatments used by transgender people while leaving other uses of hormone therapy untouched. In public comments, staff attorney Celine Zhu compared the law to cutting off insulin for incarcerated people with diabetes and said that the state was denying care for a similarly serious diagnosis.
State officials responded that Georgia is not required to make gender-affirming care available and presented studies to argue that ending hormone therapy does not meet the legal standard of “deliberate indifference” to serious medical needs. Calvert rejected those arguments and also discounted testimony from prison doctors, noting that they were following the terms of the statute rather than independently deciding that inmates had no medical need. “Defendants cannot deny medical care and then defeat an injunction by saying nothing bad has happened yet,” she wrote.
The ruling shifts decisions about treatment back to medical professionals and patients, although it does not guarantee that every request for gender-affirming care will be approved. Instead, it requires that access to hormone therapy be determined through individual clinical assessments. Georgia’s prison system began offering hormone therapy in 2016 after earlier litigation, and state records show that by mid-2025 more than 100 incarcerated people were already receiving this care.
Georgia’s Department of Corrections has filed a notice of appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and Attorney General Chris Carr has pledged to continue defending the law. For now, the injunction ensures that transgender people in Georgia prisons retain access to medically necessary care while the case proceeds.