The office of Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey on Friday removed an online form, first made available in March, that was used to collect reports or complaints about gender transition interventions that Missourians have either experienced or observed.

A spokesperson for Attorney General Bailey, Madeline Sieren, told the Washington Blade the move was necessary to “ensure the integrity of a government website” pending the outcome of an investigation into efforts by “far-left activists” to “hack our system.”

Sieren did not respond to a follow up question about whether, how, and in which circumstances the Attorney General’s office might pursue law enforcement activity in connection with information reported on the form, specifically that which concerns health care administered to others.

Nor did she address a question from the Blade about why the Attorney General’s office sought information about supposed harms related to gender affirming care beyond those which they or their immediate families experienced directly.

The form was intended to serve as a “tip line” stemming from Bailey’s office’s investigation into a St. Louis pediatric transgender center, Sieren said, but the connection is not evident from the language used in the form, which broadly welcomes any “complaint or concern” about gender transition interventions performed anywhere in Missouri.

In recent months, Bailey and conservative elected officials in Missouri have escalated legislative and policy attacks on the rights of transgender people in the state, in areas from education to athletics, but the most extreme measures have targeted healthcare access.

On April 13, Bailey issued an emergency rule restricting guideline-directed gender-affirming healthcare for Missourians of all ages, imposing hurdles so onerous that the policy might be tantamount to a categorical ban on access to puberty blockers, hormones and gender-transition surgery.

Should the rule take effect as planned on April 27, it will become the country’s most extreme anti-trans healthcare ban to-date because of its broad applicability to adults with gender dysphoria.

Meanwhile, the ACLU is tracking 48 anti-LGBTQ — mostly anti-trans — bills from Missouri’s legislature, which is controlled by a Republican supermajority.

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