Judge orders Georgia to continue hormone therapy for transgender inmates

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge has permanently ordered Georgia's prison system to keep providing some kinds of gender-affirming care for transgender prisoners, although the state plans to appeal.

U.S. District Judge Victoria Marie Calvert last week ruled that a new state law denying hormone therapy to inmates violated their protection against cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. She ordered the state to keep providing hormones to inmates who had been receiving therapy and to allow others medically diagnosed as needing hormone therapy to begin receiving treatment.

“The court finds that there is no genuine dispute of fact that gender dysphoria is a serious medical need," Calvert wrote in her order. "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.”

Calvert had already issued a preliminary order in September blocking the law before finalizing it.

It is the latest turn in legal battles over federal and state efforts to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors. President Donald Trump's administration in April sued Maine for not complying with the government’s push to ban transgender athletes in girls sports.

The Republican president also has sought to block federal spending on gender-affirming medical care for those under age 19 — instead promoting talk therapy only to treat young transgender people. And the Supreme Court has allowed him to kick transgender service members out of the military, even as court fights continue.

The Georgia case was brought on behalf of transgender inmates by the Center for Constitutional Rights after Georgia enacted a law in May banning the use of state money to pay for hormone therapy, gender-transition surgery or other methods to change the appearance of sexual characteristics.

“It is not a health care issue that should be the responsibility of the taxpayers,” said Sen. Randy Robertson, a Cataula Republican who sponsored Senate Bill 185.

Lawyers for the state have already filed a notice of appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Attorney General Chris Carr, an elected Republican running for governor, has vowed to fight the lawsuit “all the way to the Supreme Court,” calling it ”absurd."

The measure roiled the 2025 Georgia legislative session, with most House Democrats walking out of their chamber to boycott the final vote on the bill. But Gov. Brian Kemp signed it into law in May, and prison medical officials began making plans to gradually reduce and then end hormone therapy to inmates who were receiving it by October.

Georgia had begun providing hormone therapy in 2016 after a lawsuit by another inmate represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights. Prison officials counted more than 340 inmates who had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria in custody in mid-August, and said 107 inmates were receiving hormone therapy as of June 30.

The state presented studies to argue that denying or removing people from hormone therapy doesn't meet the legal standard of “deliberate indifference,” but Calvert rejected their consideration. Calvert also rejected testimony from physicians in the prison system, saying they weren’t deciding that inmates had no medical need for hormone therapy but instead were just following the law’s directives. She said the counseling and monitoring promised by the state was inadequate.

“Defendants cannot deny medical care and then defeat an injunction by saying nothing bad has happened yet," Calvert wrote.

Lawyers for the state argued Calvert was ignoring recent court decisions, including the Tennessee ban, as well as a recent 11th Circuit decision deciding that a Georgia county didn't have to pay for a sheriff deputy's gender-transition surgery.

“It is crystal clear the state legislatures have wide deference to enact laws regulating sex-change procedures like the cross-sex hormonal interventions at issue in this case,” lawyers for the state wrote in November.

FILE - Georgia House Democrats walk out of the House Chamber in protest, after Senate Bill 185, which would outlaw spending on gender affirming care for transgender prisoners, was introduced at the state Capitol, April 2, 2025, in Atlanta. (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)

SAN BARTOLO MORELOS, Mexico (AP) — For 32 years, Cruz Monroy has walked the streets of a small town on the fringes of Mexico's capital with a tower of small cages filled with a rainbow of birds.

The melodies of red cardinals, green and blue parakeets and multicolored finches fill the days of “pajareros,” or street bird vendors, like him.

The act of selling birds in stacks of cages — sometimes far taller than the men who carry them — goes back generations. They've long been a fixture in Mexican markets and are among 1.5 million street vendors that work on the streets of Mexico.

“Hearing their songs, it brings people joy,” Monroy said, the sounds of dozens of birdsongs echoing over him from his home in his small town outside Mexico's capital, where he cares for and raises the birds. “This is our tradition, my father was also a bird-seller.”

During the Catholic holiday of Palm Sunday, hundreds of pajareros from across the country flock to Mexico City and decorate 10-foot-tall stacks of cages, adorning them with bright flowers, tinsel and images of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint.

They walk miles through the streets of the capital with their birds and their families to the city's iconic basilica.

But pajareros have slowly disappeared from the streets in recent years in the face of mounting restrictions by authorities and sharp criticisms by animal rights groups, who call the practice an act of animal abuse and trafficking.

Monroy and others say they don't capture birds like parrots and others prohibited by Mexican authorities — which say tropical species are “wild birds, not pets” — often breed the birds they own themselves and take good care of their animals. Despite that, Monroy said in his family, the tradition is dying out.

In the face of harassment by authorities and mounting criticisms, he said he wants his own sons to find more stable work.

"Because of the restrictions, harassment by certain authorities, many friends have left selling birds behind," Monroy said. “For my children, it's not stable work anymore. We have to look for other alternatives.”

People walk with decorated bird cages during an annual pilgrimage of bird vendors to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Sunday, March 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Bird sellers with his decorated cages enter the Basilica of Guadalupe during their annual pilgrimage in Mexico City, Sunday, March 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Humberto Lopez prepares a cage with birds to sell in Toluca, Mexico, Wednesday, March 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

A decorated cage sits on a street during an annual pilgrimage of bird vendors to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Sunday, March 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

People walk with decorated bird cages during an annual pilgrimage of bird vendors to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Sunday, March 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

A vendor prepares a cage containing his birds before an annual pilgrimage of bird vendors to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Sunday, March 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)