The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit sided with schools over parents in Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, a case involving the legality of school social transition policies that do not require parental notification when a student requests to be addressed by a cross-sex name or pronouns. As the Federalist Society chronicles, the parents in Foote had standing: their daughter was seeing a professional for gender confusion and they had expressly asked her school not to discuss the issue with her. Months later, however, the middle schooler told the school she was “genderqueer” and requested to go by mixed pronouns without her parents’ knowledge, to which the school happily obliged. Despite paying deference to court precedent that recognizes parents’ historical right to direct the care and upbringing of their children under the due process clause of the 14th amendment, in Foote the 1st circuit essentially ruled that schools take over for parents while on school grounds. Moreover, even though social transition is often conceptualized as a psychological intervention, the court rejected the argument that the school’s counseling and encouragement constituted mental health care. The Supreme Court is set to hear a similar case in June.
Alabama is spearheading a 23-state amicus brief in support of executive order 14187, which prohibits federal funds from being used to support sex-trait modification procedures for persons under 19. The executive order has been temporarily blocked, with a federal judge in Maryland issuing a temporary restraining order which was recently extended until early March. “Our team in Alabama uncovered a shocking conspiracy to manipulate medical guidelines and then use the misleading recommendations to justify abolishing age limits for sex change procedures. Even so, the ACLU and its allies continue to appeal to the debunked guidelines to assure courts that sex-change procedures for kids are medically necessary. They ignore the fact that every single systematic evidence review shows the opposite and paper over the Biden Administration’s remarkable political intrusion into the scientific process. Our brief is aimed at setting the record straight and reminding courts of the political and legal scandals driven by the left that have directly harmed our nation’s vulnerable children” Alabama AG Steve Marshall writes.
A new memo made public as part of a court filing in the case of Talbott et al. v. Trump et al. provides additional insight into the Trump administration’s implementation of EO 14183, which prohibits trans-identified and gender dysphoric individuals from serving in the military. The memo clarifies that “Service members who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria will be processed for separation from military service.” Service members can be granted a waiver on a case by case basis, contingent on them demonstrating "36 consecutive months of stability… in their sex without clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has opened an investigation into the state of Maine to determine whether it engaged in discrimination on the basis of sex under Title IX after the Attorney General and Governor announced that they would still allow trans-identified boys to compete in women’s sports. Notably, the officials’ stance violates Trump’s EO on keeping men out of women’s sports, and the administration’s interpretation of Title IX.
On Thursday, the Iowa Senate and House passed legislation that removes “gender identity” as a protected category from Iowa’s Civil Rights Act. It now heads to the desk of Gov. Kim Reynolds. Earlier in the week, the bill advanced through subcommittee 2-1, and later cleared the House Judiciary Committee, 13-8. Supporters of the bill argue that the current enshrinement of “gender identity” in Iowa civil rights law “elevated protections for transgender Iowans at the expense of others’ rights” and that the new bill would be a welcome corrective. "The removal of gender identity as a protected class means that transgender rights are not elevated above women and other citizens," Rep. Steven Holt (R-Denison) said. "Transgender rights will continue to be protected, just as are the rights of all Americans."
Dr. David Gortler writes about the FDA’s Drug Safety Monitoring Board (DRMB) and the politicization of the off-label use of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria under the former leadership of Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni. Under Dr. Cavazonni’s leadership of the DRMB–she resigned before Trump’s inauguration–there were nearly 70,000 reports of adverse events for puberty blockers submitted to the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting Database (AERS), however, these events were never detailed in the FDA’s annual reports. “Cavazzoni determined that tens of thousands of puberty-blocking transgender drug adverse events – including deaths, hospitalizations, and permanent disabilities – simply aren’t a ‘Drug Risk Monitoring Board’ priority” Gortler writes. Gorter takes the FDA to task for selectively warning the public about the risks of off-label drug use for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, even though these drugs had dramatically fewer adverse events than those associated with the drugs used for gender medicine.
In City Journal, Leor Sapir writes about how the New England Journal of Medicine’s commitment to social justice principles, rather than the pursuit of knowledge, has helped enforce the artificial consensus on the benefits of “affirming care” in the United States. Sapir makes the case that the journal’s coverage of pediatric gender medicine “abandoned even the pretense of objectivity, declining to hold researchers to scientific standards or air alternative views that would advance scientific knowledge.” In Sapir’s estimation, since 2015 the Perspectives section of NEJM has published 26 articles in support of affirming care for minors, but no articles critical of the practice, despite the submission of multiple letters to the editor addressing methodological critiques of the evidence base. Significantly, the longtime editor of NEJM’s Perspectives, Debra Malina, has a trans-identified daughter who currently works as a gender therapist, raising questions about conflicts of interest.
Chris Rufo and Hannah Grossman chronicle a controversy involving NSA employees who discussed the logistics of gender transition, kink, and polyamory, using the NSA’s Intelink messaging program, in clear violation of its terms of service. Moreover, according to an NSA employee, members of these messaging groups “spent all day recruiting activists and holding meetings with titles such as ‘Privilege,’ ‘Ally Awareness,’ ‘Pride,’ and ‘Transgender Community Inclusion.’ And they did so with the full support of NSA leadership, which declared that DEI was ‘not only mission critical, but mission imperative.’” The National Review has since reported that the employees involved in the explicit chats are set to be fired.
Given the growing spotlight on detransitioners, and their unique and often unmet medical needs, David Marcus argues that Congress should pass legislation which mandates that insurers who cover “affirming care” must also cover detransition related interventions. Marcus also argues for expanding the legal options available to detranstioners by removing “legal barriers, such as statutes of limitation” that hinder them from pursuing private rights of action against medical providers who harmed them.
Joseph Figliolia
Policy Analyst
News
