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Queensland is facing a second major challenge to its reinstated ban on new public gender-affirming care for young people, with lawyers behind the first filing new court claims.
The LGBTI Legal Service announced on Tuesday it had filed an application for judicial review in the Supreme Court, seeking to have Health Minister Tim Nicholls’ directive declared unlawful.
In comments through the legal service, the transgender young person bringing the case said choices in consultation with specialists, therapist and family over years had been denied.
“In Queensland, we’re not prepared to go down that pathway of trialling unproven drugs on children,” Health Minister Tim Nicholls said announcing an extension of the ban last month.Credit: Matt Dennien
“To have our medical decisions overturned by a political agenda is shameful and crosses a multitude of boundaries of human rights,” they said.
The case will join two legal proceedings still underway against the government, including what is effectively a class action.
A “pause” on new hormone treatments in the public sector was announced by the Crisafulli government one year ago this month until an independent review could report back.
The departmental directive was based on a three-page document with allegations of “apparently unauthorised” services to 42 paediatric patients in Cairns.
But the opposition and other stakeholders have argued the ultimately cabinet-approved ban was an ideological decision despite favourable external evaluation.
“In Queensland, we’re not prepared to go down that pathway of trialling unproven drugs on children,” Nicholls said at the time.
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In the statement on Tuesday, LGBTI Legal Service president Ren Shrike said the new judicial review application would seek to have the ministerial ban also ruled unlawful and voided.
“Minister Nicholls made the direction on the basis that banning access to care for new patients was ‘necessary in the public interest’,” Shrike said.
“Our case states that the decision was made unlawfully on four grounds, including because it was not in accordance with human rights and went beyond the Minister’s powers under section 44(1) of the Act.”
The young person’s mother, also speaking through the legal service, said she just wanted the best for her child.
“This care should be a medical decision between our family and our doctors, not a political one,” she said.
“The government have made this decision to deny my child a service that was life changing. As a family, we now have to go through the private system at great cost.”
Court dates for the new judicial review and representative action are yet to be set. Nicholls has been contacted for comment.
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