Blue States Sue Seeking to Protect Trans Youth Care
Leading Off: More than a dozen states have challenged the DOJ’s targeting of youth care providers. The UK will study trans youth care, but community advocates warn the deck is stacked. And Brown University offers their trans students as a sacrifice. Our top stories starting out the week in trans news.
by Assigned Media
The attorney general of New York filed a lawsuit in the Massachusetts District Court late last week challenging the Trump Department of Justice’s attacks on providers of trans youth healthcare.
Sixteen states and the District of Columbia joined the lawsuit, MA, CA, NY, CT, IL, DE, HI, ME, MD, MI, NV, NJ, NM, PA, RI, and WI. The suit alleges that DOJ investigations are being inappropriately used to attempt to enact the administration’s political goal of ending trans youth healthcare, circumventing the normal legislative process.
In a statement, the NY attorney general drew attention to the double bind providers find themselves in. State laws in many blue states ban discrimination against transgender people in healthcare settings, requiring providers to offer the kinds of standard, consensus approved treatments for gender dysphoria the administration seeks to ban. Meanwhile, the administration has made it clear that they will target providers who continue to offer treatment, regardless of state law, and with no evidence of any wrongdoing or impropriety on the part of the providers.
While it’s been little noticed in media accounts, the Trump administration has not confined their attacks to minors. The executive order targeting trans healthcare includes 18 year olds, legal adults, in its definition of “children.” Trans 18 and 19 year olds have seen their ability to access hormone therapy and surgery reduced alongside that of younger trans people.
Read more of our coverage of clinics shuttering or reducing treatment options to trans youth and young adults.
Brown University has agreed to sacrifice the dignity of their trans students to the Trump administration. In a craven deal that included a pledge of $50 million to support workforce development efforts in Rhode Island and restored $50 million in research funding that had been withheld by the federal government in an extortion effort, the university agreed to adopt the administration’s definition of sex as being binary and unchangeable and to ban trans students from participation in athletics and from using restrooms and locker rooms aligning with their gender identity.
President Christina Paxon defended the decision in a statement saying that the university would “continue to provide housing and restroom access in a way that allows for gender-inclusive, women-only and men-only options.” The statement appeared to implicitly define women as cis women and men as cis men, following the lead of the Trump administration.
Trans alumni and their allies are incensed by the decision, including Sandy Ernest Allen who wrote about their shock and horror in a piece for Assigned Media over the weekend.
“As a trans, Brown alum last week I woke up really sad, really angry … and also, deep down, hopeful.” Allen wrote. “Hopeful the Brown student body, and our alumni base, will make hell — given this university’s longstanding, disproportionate embrace of queer students and this extremely off-brand capitulation to fascist anti-trans hate.”
The UK announced a major study of trans healthcare, garnering coverage in the New York Times. However, advocates for the trans community have raised questions about the lead researcher’s ties to SEGM, an anti-trans advocacy group whose disinformation tactics have been chronicled by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Puberty blockers and hormone therapy has been all but unobtainable in the UK since soon after the publication of the Cass Review, which presented a skewed and biased picture of trans healthcare in order to recommend it should be limited. The new study represents some reason to hope that evidence of the care’s efficacy will lead to access being re-established, but the lead researcher having ties to anti-trans groups is moderating expectations.
Some families in the UK have said they fear investigation by social services merely for seeking treatment for their children’s gender dysphoria.
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