COLUMBUS, Ohio (LifeSiteNews) — The Ohio Supreme Court has allowed the state to resume enforcing a law banning “gender transition” procedures on minors, while the legal battle over its constitutionality continues.

HB 68, the Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, forbids courts from considering a parents’ refusal to “affirm” a child’s gender confusion as weighing against their parental rights, prohibits physicians from surgically or chemically “transitioning” minors, requires mental health professionals to check for other mental health disorders before diagnosing a minor with a condition related to gender confusion, and bans schools and interscholastic athletic organizations from allowing gender-confused males to compete in athletic teams intended for females.

“Moderate” Republican Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed the bill in January 2024, instead signing a weaker executive order addressing only some of the same issues. Later that month, however, the Ohio legislature overrode his veto, making HB 68 state law without him.

The far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued, claiming it violated the Ohio Constitution. An appellate court temporarily blocked the law in March, but now the state’s highest court has reversed it, The Hill reports. “This cause is pending before the court as a jurisdictional appeal. Upon consideration of appellants’ emergency motion for stay pending appeal, it is ordered by the court that the motion is granted,” the order said.

“We look forward to showing once again that the legislature acted properly in enacting this constitutional law, which protects our children from irreversible medical decisions,” said Bethany McCorkle, spokesperson for Ohio Republican Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Dave Yost.

A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.

Studies find that more than 80 percent of children suffering gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence and that “reassignment” procedures fail to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide – and even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.