A federal judge has struck down Arkansas’s first-in-the-nation ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Judge James Moody Jr. ruled the ban to be unconstitutional because it discriminates against transgender people and violates the rights of doctors. In his decision, Moody wrote, “Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing.” One of the plaintiffs who sued Arkansas over the ban was a 17-year-old trans student named Dylan Brandt, who responded to the ruling by saying, “Transgender kids across the country are having their own futures threatened by laws like this one, and it’s up to all of us to speak out, fight back, and give them hope.”