The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has introduced new guidance and an online portal for whistleblowers with tips or complaints related to violations of the administration’s EO on “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.” “The Department will robustly enforce Federal laws protecting these courageous whistleblowers, including laws that protect health care professionals from being forced to violate their religious beliefs or moral convictions,” said Acting HHS OCR Director Anthony Archeval.
The Justice Department has announced a lawsuit against the state of Maine over alleged violations of Title IX and the administration’s EO on “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports.” Shortly after the EO was issued, the Maine Principals' Association announced that it would continue to follow state law rather than the executive order. While the exact number of trans-identified athletes competing in women’s athletics in the state remains unclear, the lawsuit provides several examples of male athletes competing against, and outperforming, their female competition. "By prioritizing gender identity over biological reality, Maine's policies deprive girl athletes of fair competition, deny them equal athletic opportunities, and expose them to heightened risks of physical injury and psychological harm," the lawsuit reads.
Last Friday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services signaled that state Medicaid dollars should not be used to fund sex-denying procedures for minors, including cross-sex hormones and surgeries. “We have a duty to ensure medical care is lawful, necessary, and truly in the best interests of patients” Mehmet Oz, the new CMS administrator, said in a statement. CMS also sent a letter to state Medicaid agencies highlighting the weak-evidence base for “affirming care,” and reminding agencies that there is a duty to use Medicaid funds only for services “consistent with quality of care” and “consistent with the best interest of recipients.” By contrast, the letter characterizes the affirmative model of care as “initiated with an underdeveloped body of evidence” that may result in “long-term and irreparable harm”
In the Boston Globe, Carine Hajjar draws an illuminating parallel between “gender ideology” and religion to demonstrate how progressive activists have used government power to impose a contested belief system on Americans. Hajjar points out how even though the tenets of “gender ideology” lack deep scientific grounding and are based on “statements of faith,” they are treated as unassailable. Hajjar argues that “trans ideology” is exceptionalized in American life and allowed to go “further in public institutions, like schools, than modern organized religion legally can.” Hajjar makes the case that we can inculcate respect for differences that acknowledges the realities of sex-distress without imposing contested beliefs on fellow Americans.
In City Journal, Christina Buttons takes aim at a core tenet of transgender activism: that “gender identity” is innate and immutable, a claim which is often advanced to assert constitutional protections for trans-identified individuals as a “discernible class.” Buttons homes in on an amicus brief submitted in the case of Talbott v. Trump that promotes the immutability argument. The case is a challenge to Trump’s EO prohibiting transgender participation in the military. In her critique, Buttons addresses the desistance research on “gender dysphoria,” the sheer heterogeneity of trans-identified populations, and the flaws of studies which advance the notion of “brain-sex.” “As courts and policymakers weigh the arguments in Talbott v. Trump and similar cases, they should treat claims of scientific certainty with skepticism. Decisions with profound personal and social consequences demand clear evidence, honest interpretation, and restraint in drawing conclusions that the research cannot support” Buttons concludes.
The Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Rachel Morrison provides context for the Trump administration's “clarification” that gender dysphoria is not a protected disability under a Biden-era disability discrimination rule. Last week, HHS clarified that language in the preamble of the Biden-era rule, which implies gender dysphoria may be a protected disability under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), is not enforceable. Morrison briefly unpacks the “ongoing debate over whether gender dysphoria falls under the laws’ exclusions” and explains the rationale for legal challenges to the Bide-era rule.
The Daily Caller obtained record requests revealing that over the last few years “a handful of California school districts helped hundreds of students change their so-called ‘gender identity’ on official records.” Between 2023-2024 alone, more than 300 children across six California school districts were placed on “gender support plans,” or had their pronouns changed in internal systems. It is unclear from the records if parents were notified in particular instances, however, the Trump administration is investigating the California DOE for potential violations of the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law which prohibits schools from notifying parents if their child adopts a cross-sex identity at school. Notably, in the Capistrano Unified School District nearly a third of the students requesting to “change genders” at school also had an individualized Education Program (IEP), which accommodates students with special needs.
A new paper appearing in Frontiers in Endocrinology reviews the limited scientific literature on fertility preservation efforts in gender dysphoric youth seeking medical interventions and explores the ethical implications. The review notes that fertility preservation counseling is often not standardized, and although fertility preservation procedures are available to dysphoric youth, studies suggest that very few pursue these procedures even though adult transitioners often report regret about not being able to conceive biological children. The paper also reviews what is known about the impact of medical transition on fertility, and the effectiveness of fertility preservation efforts themselves. Ultimately, the paper concludes that “iatrogenically causing impaired fertility with GnRHa and cross-sex hormones removes from these children their right to an open future to decide their fertility goals. It is unethical to induce infertility/subfertility in children and young adolescents under the auspices of GAT, and then offer experimental, invasive, nascent fertility preservation in children as a way in which to circumvent this iatrogenesis.”
On Wednesday, the UK’s Supreme Court made the unanimous decision that “the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.” The court went on to add that any interpretation of sex that includes “gender identity” is “incoherent and impracticable.” As Politico notes, the ruling is a blow to trans activists who often argue that non-discrimination protections for sex should extend to “gender identity.” Politico also traces the history of this legal case, which first launched in 2018 in response to activity by the Scottish government.
In Gender Clinic News, Bernard Lane writes about an analysis of “treatment trajectories” among minor patients referred to Norway’s national gender clinic between 2000 to 2020. Shockingly, nearly 40% of the female patients referred as minors went on to receive mastectomies as adults. Moreover, although the analysis noted high loss to follow-up that could undercount the number of detransitioners, nearly 2.3% of female patients referred as minors stopped testosterone treatment as adults. Among female patients who started taking testosterone as recently as 2018, nearly one in ten have halted treatment. “Our detransitioning numbers [at Norway’s specialist national clinic] could potentially be the beginning of an increase in persons transitioning back to their birth-assigned gender,” the analysis says.
Joseph Figliolia
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