A U.S. judge on Tuesday allowed the state of Georgia to resume enforcing a new Republican-backed ban on hormone replacement therapy for transgender people under age 18, after a federal appeals court allowed a similar law in Alabama to go back into effect. U.S. District Judge Sarah Geraghty in Atlanta two weeks ago blocked enforcement of the Georgia law after concluding that a group of parents and transgender minors would likely succeed in establishing it violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of equal protection under the law. But a day after Geraghty ruled, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Aug. 21 reversed a lower-court ruling that had blocked enforcement of a similar Alabama law banning the use of puberty-blocking drugs and hormones to treat gender dysphoria in transgender minors.