A veto override vote last week made North Carolina the 22nd state in the country to enact legislation restricting gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

The new law bars medical professionals from providing gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgery, to anyone under the age of 18. It’s a cruel law that singles out transgender children and denies them access to medically necessary treatment. And, in doing so, it effectively bars parents from making these decisions with their children.

But will it hold up in court?

Similar laws in other states have already faced legal challenges. A federal judge temporarily blocked parts of Georgia’s gender-affirming care ban on Sunday on the grounds that it is “likely” unconstitutional — and would likely “put some individuals at risk of the serious harms associated with gender dysphoria that gender-affirming care seeks to prevent.”

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The same has happened in Indiana, Florida and Arkansas. In June, a judge said the Arkansas law violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution by specifically prohibiting “medical care that only transgender people choose to undergo.”

Even the U.S. Department of Justice stepped in to challenge similar bans on gender-affirming care in Alabama and Tennessee. Those laws were initially blocked, but were later allowed to go into effect after an appeals court ruling.

Opponents of the bans argue that restricting gender-affirming care discriminates against transgender people and violates the rights of parents to make medical decisions for their own children. Judges have cast doubt on whether there is even a legitimate government interest in restricting gender-affirming care, with one judge saying it is “an exercise in politics, not good medicine.”

Groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics say that gender-affirming care is evidence-based and even life-saving for transgender youth. Hormone therapy may be provided to patients after puberty, but gender-affirming surgeries are rarely, if ever, conducted on minors at North Carolina’s major hospital systems, The News & Observer reported.

How ironic that the same party that’s trumpeting the Parents Bill of Rights is taking away a very basic right of parents: to care for their children in the way they, in consultation with their doctors, believe is appropriate and life-saving. It’s hypocrisy.

Before North Carolina’s law was passed, Democratic lawmakers pointed to legal challenges in other states as a warning. Even supporters of the law have acknowledged that litigation is possible, if not likely, but that seems to be a risk that Republican lawmakers were willing to take.

“I would imagine that there will be litigation on that. There is no shortage of lawsuits in North Carolina,” House Speaker Tim Moore told The News & Observer this summer.

Well, yes. But we’ll remind Moore that the reason North Carolina has no shortage of lawsuits is because its lawmakers insist on testing the limits of their own power. From voter ID to gerrymandering to House Bill 2, Republicans have spent quite a bit of time in court.

It hasn’t been much of a deterrent, despite how expensive these legal battles have become. Between 2011 and 2016, Republican lawmakers spent more than $10.5 million defending their controversial laws, including more than $1 million defending HB2. The most recent redistricting case cost taxpayers at least $2.9 million.

Some Democrats, including Gov. Roy Cooper, have suggested that this recent anti-LGBTQ legislation could be a repeat of the “bathroom bill” disaster, which cost North Carolina billions of dollars in lost business opportunity. The reality is that it probably won’t, which is why Republicans feel bold enough to do it.

While a ban on gender-affirming care is no less shameful or embarrassing for our state, it’s unlikely to have the same political and economic consequences that HB2 had. Unlike in 2016, North Carolina is far from the only state choosing to fight culture wars that harm LGBTQ+ people, and corporate America has largely chosen to stay quiet on the issue so far.

But it could very well have similar legal consequences, and Republican lawmakers may find themselves in a familiar place: defending their bigotry and overreach in court.