The government wrote a ban. That is true. The Crown is not currently enforcing it. That is also true.
SL 2025/256 — Medicines (Restriction on Prescribing Gonadotropin-releasing Hormone Analogues) Amendment Regulations 2025 — was made on 17 November 2025 and comes into force on 19 December 2025. New regulation 44BA: an authorised prescriber must not prescribe a GnRH analogue for gender incongruence or gender dysphoria. Already-started treatment is grandfathered. Other uses, including precocious puberty, are not what this restriction is aimed at.
SL 2025/302 (No 2), made 1 December 2025, also in force 19 December 2025, narrowed the wording. The first instrument was not limited to puberty suppression and could have caught adults. The government called that inadvertent. The restriction now applies to prescribing for the purpose of puberty suppression in a child or adolescent with gender incongruence or dysphoria. This is not an adult ban.
On 17 December 2025 the High Court declined to suspend the regulations, then declared that the Crown should take no steps to enforce them pending PATHA’s judicial review. That non-enforcement order is a setback. The Court of Appeal later recorded the Ministry of Health’s position: the regulations “have not been set aside and are in force from 19 December 2025,” and the Ministry “will not pursue enforcement” until the substantive review concludes.
[High Court [2025] NZHC 4045 (PDF)](https://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/assets/cases/2025/2025-NZHC-4045.pdf)
[Court of Appeal [2026] NZCA 8 (PDF)](https://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/assets/cases/2026/2026-NZCA-8.pdf)
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