Arizona Gov. Ducey signed SB 1138, banning irreversible gender-reassignment surgery for minors

On March 30, 2022, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed SB 1138 into law, adding section 32-3230 to the Arizona Revised Statutes to prohibit physicians from providing "irreversible gender reassignment surgery" to any individual under 18 years of age. The law carves out narrow exceptions: treatment of medically verifiable disorders of sex development (intersex conditions), care for infections, injuries, or complications caused by prior gender-transition procedures, and surgery required to address an imminent threat to life or major bodily function.

The statute restricts only surgical intervention. As the enacted text and contemporaneous reporting confirm, it does not limit puberty blockers or hormone therapy, and it does not require any minor to discontinue an existing prescription. In his signing letter, Ducey described the measure as delaying "irreversible gender reassignment surgery until the age of 18." The bill was sponsored by state Sen. Warren Petersen and passed the Republican-controlled Legislature before reaching the governor's desk.

This is a distinct event from the same-day SB 1165 "Save Women's Sports Act," a transgender-athletes sports ban that Ducey signed on the same date and that is recorded separately in the archive. SB 1138 and SB 1165 are different acts addressing different subjects; they share only the same actor and date. The originating news-monitoring tag "Gender Affirming Care Ban: Minors" is directionally accurate but overbroad for this bill: SB 1138 bans only irreversible surgical intervention for minors, not the broader category of gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers or hormone therapy.