Conservative Writer Claims Utah Ban on Trans Care is Not Enough

A writer for the Federalist falsely claims the Utah ban continues to allow gender affirming care, such as surgery and hormone therapy for youth diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

by Evan Urquhart

Often it is possible to understand the intentions of writers who produce transphobic propaganda for conservative publications. This is not one of those times. In a bizarre piece for the Federalist, writer Tristan Justice claims that the recent ban on gender affirming care in Utah doesn’t go far enough because it doesn’t really ban gender affirming care. This is false.

The effects of the ban are easy enough to understand, even for people who are not experts in legislative wording. At the top of the bill it provides a summary which clearly states the bill “prohibits a health care provider from providing a hormonal transgender treatment to new patients who were not diagnosed with gender dysphoria before a certain date” and “prohibits performing sex characteristic surgical procedures on a minor for the purpose of effectuating a sex change.”

screenshot from the official Utah government website

In addition, mainstream news reports also say that Utah’s ban on gender affirming care is a ban on gender affirming care. No minor can access any surgery to masculinize or feminize their appearance due to a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and no minor with gender dysphoria who is not already being treated with hormone therapy can access cross sex hormones. There is one narrow exception for youth who have already been recieving treatment to continue to recieve it, instead of being forcibly detransitioned by the state. That’s all.

The Federalist author, however, begs to disagree. He says that the ban is toothless, because any minor with a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria will continue to be able to access hormones and surgery.

screenshot from the Federalist

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, this is completely false. Not only is it false, though, it’s also a bit hard to understand how anyone could read the Utah bill and genuinely misunderstand what it does. The text of the bill is not misleadingly worded. The exception for patients who have already been recieving hormones is clearly stated to only apply to those who had already been diagnosed with gender dysphoria “before a certain date.” However, it’s equally hard to imagine why a writer would lie about something that is so easily disproven. The bill simply does not include the type of exemption that the Federalist claims it has.

The article does not stop there, after making a bizarre lie or hard-to-fathom misinterpretation of a quite clearly and simply worded ban. No, that would be too easy. The author further objects to the fact that this ban, which he claims is toothless and not really a ban at all, doesn’t also ban transition for adults.

screenshot from the Federalist

The author then shares a Libs of TikTok tweet targeting an LGBT group in Utah which sponsored an all-ages drag show, and concludes with the thought that Utah, despite having a reputation as a "deep red” state, is much too far to the left.

Anti-trans writers regularly lie outright, but they’re also so shockingly stupid it makes it impossible to tell intentional falsehoods from the sort of misunderstandings a middle-schooler could reliably avoid. If there’s a takeaway here, it’s that conservative publications are constantly scraping the bottom of the barrel to find people willing to write stuff that agree with their party line.