#u.s. v. skrmetti

[jacksproject2025]

You’re DISGUSTING. You are fucking DISGUSTING. Chase Strangio is fighting for the EXISTENCE of trans people! Are you that transphobic? Do you think trans kids should have to live in the wrong body day after day? That IS child abuse and parents shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it because of their “rights”! Trans people have the right to exist in their authentic bodies and if you disagree just admit that you’re a fucking monster. We will not let trans people become extinct!

If the options are minors being taken away from their parents because they won’t allow them to “transition” via life altering drugs and bodily mutilation or trans adults ceasing to exist then I’ll choose the latter every time. Call me a transphobe all day and all night, I don’t care.

[gwydionmisha]

I am not sanguine after oral arguments. I think it's about to go very bad.

[kharmii]

Honestly as refreshing it is to see your sane takes on things over here I can’t imagine how the possible heat you‘re getting looks like.

At the same time I know you‘re above those but still… sanity comes with a price nowadays…

Actually, I'm getting almost none. I think leftists are generally cowardly and non-confrontational. I'm better equipped both mentally and emotionally to fight a battle of attrition. I'd be willing to bet even that leftist who wanted to act all edgy and complement me for being a funny right-wing troll has blocked me by now (unless they are one of the few Liberation Army fans who haven't). It's rare to know a leftist who can take too much dissent, even though I can see the leftist dominant culture being pushed constantly and just be like, "Eh...."

I think it is. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard an argument about whether states have the right to ban puberty blockers for children. The arguments of the transgender activists fell apart and made them look stupid. No, being transgender isn't an immutable characteristic. No, gender affirming care doesn't reduce child suicide rates. Yes, puberty blockers lead to sterilization in most cases. Yes, other countries are scaling back treatments for children based on lack of evidence it does any good.

It's going to take until summer to get a definitive ruling (which is just insane. Damn government..) but I'm optimistic that once the states have the right to ban child castration and mutilation, then it will open it up to pass a nationwide ban.

Matt Walsh did an interesting take on it.

His intro explained well why normies have been strong armed into accepting radical left wing bullshit for so long.

The Supreme Court held oral arguments yesterday in one of the most important cases in this country's history. It's a case that will decide whether under the US Constitution states are allowed to outlaw child sterilization and mutilation in the name of gender Ideology. Now in any other generation this question would not have made it to the Supreme Court in the first place. The question itself would have been bewildering to anyone who heard it for the simple reason that sterilizing castrating and mutilating children is one of the greatest evils imaginable. Even some of the most barbaric civilizations throughout history wouldn't even contemplate it. You don't need a law degree to understand that. You don't need a convoluted analysis under the equal protection Clause of the Constitution. You just need to be a moral person. You need to be sane and have a basic working understanding of human biology.

Now one of the main reasons that we've come to this point is that trans activists have successfully intimidated everyone else into silence. Trans activists aren't capable of making coherent or rational arguments in defense of child butchery because child butchery is indefensible, but they're very capable of shouting down anyone who opposes their ideology. Predictably that's what they tried to do to me when I spoke yesterday at the rally outside the Supreme Court. Here's part of my remarks in front of the capital just to give you an idea of what the scene was like.

Here it is. This case is about the rights of children. It's about the right of a child to be protected from this. That's what it's about. Children have the constitutional right, the human right, the God-given right to live and grow and learn about themselves and the world without being indoctrinated and exploited by people who reject the fundamental realities of existence. Children have a right to go through phases to have moments of and discomfort in their own bodies just like every generation of children before them without that being seized upon as a pretense to do to their bodies now.

As you can probably tell trans activists were shouting into megaphones the entire time that I was speaking. It happened to the other speakers too. They were doing it the whole time. Trans activist showed up in large numbers outside the court with the intention of making it difficult for us to speak and be heard and that's what I expected what happen. It is what happened. Leftists are very good at mobilizing protesters to show up and be as obnoxious as possible. They're certainly much better at that than we are but they're still losing this fight. They're losing in the state legislatures. They're losing in the culture and after yesterday's oral arguments it's pretty clear that they're about to lose in the Supreme Court as well.

Every indication we have at this point is that a majority of the justices will vote to uphold Tennessee's ban on child mutilation. If that happens it won't just protect millions of children in Tennessee and many other states have implemented similar bans will also clear the way for a national ban on these grotesque practices which have ruined the lives of untold numbers of children.

The reason we can be confident in the outcome of this case is that one by one each of the arguments from the Biden DOJ and the ACLU collapsed under questioning from the conservative justices in the majority. When the liberal justices tried their best to defend gender ideology somehow, they only managed to make matters even worse. We predicted that something like this would happen. When they can't shout you down, when they actually have to construct arguments and respond to objections trans activists tend to fall apart pretty quickly. That was the case um for the ACLUs lead attorney in this case Chase Strangio a female who quote 'identifies as a man'. To get some idea of the kind of person Chase Strangio is she's posted a variety of emotionally charged unhinged content on social media over the years....

[bnyrbt]

We all deserve to be free to live our lives without the government taking away our freedoms just because of who we are – yet anti-trans politicians continue to attack transgender people and their families by taking away their ability to control their bodies and health care. The Supreme Court must make clear in U.S. v. Skrmetti that the Constitution's protections apply to us all.

I'm joining the ACLU and people across the country in solidarity with trans youth and their families against cruel and discriminatory health care bans and for our shared freedoms. As ACLU lawyers argue inside, we're urging the Court to follow the Constitution and protect trans freedom.

Over 8,500 signatures acquired out of 10,000 wanted by December 4.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lil Kalish at HuffPost:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments for the most important transgender rights case it has ever reviewed — one that could have significant consequences on the future of lifesaving gender-affirming care for youth in the country. At the heart of the case, United States v. Skrmetti, is the question of whether a Tennessee ban on such care violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex. The Tennessee law, Senate Bill 1, encourages minors to “appreciate their sex” by prohibiting puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy for the purposes of allowing young people to live as an “identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”

The Department of Justice, Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union, who petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case, have argued that Tennessee’s law amounts to sex discrimination because it specifically bars transgender youth from these medications while allowing cisgender youth to undergo the same treatments for other conditions, such as early puberty. “This case contains some of the worst leaning into sex stereotypes that I’ve ever seen in a statute,” said Sasha Buchert, the director of the nonbinary and transgender rights project at Lambda Legal, the oldest LGBTQ+ law firm in the U.S. “It’s clearly a sex-based consideration because this is the same care that [they’re] just banning for trans people. But even further, there is this gender conformity aspect to the statute, which I think is implicit in all of these bans that we’ve seen. It’s just that Tennessee didn’t want to hide it.”

Tennessee has argued that the law does not specifically target trans people, although the state acknowledges that the ban sets “age- and use-based limits” on puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries for the “purpose of gender transition.” (Gender-affirming surgeries are not an issue in the Supreme Court case, however, as a district court threw out a challenge to those procedures.) The law has faced legal challenges since the Tennessee legislature first passed it in March 2023. One month later, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of a trans teen identified as L.W., two other families of trans youth, and a Memphis-based doctor. The DOJ then joined the suit.

That summer, a district court found that the ban likely violated the U.S. Constitution and issued a preliminary injunction on parts of the law regarding puberty blockers and hormones. Tennessee’s attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, which overturned that ruling. The Biden administration then asked the Supreme Court to review this case, arguing that any ban on trans health constitutes sex discrimination.

Since the Supreme Court only took up the Biden administration’s appeal, the court will not be weighing in on the question of whether the state law violates the “fundamental right of parents” to make medical decisions for their children, which is a central question in a separate lawsuit, L.W. v. Skrmetti.

The outcome of United States v. Skrmetti will provide much-needed legal clarity for trans youth and their families amidst an increasingly anti-trans political climate. Twenty-six states have passed laws restricting health care providers from prescribing puberty blockers and hormones, as well as performing surgeries on transgender youth. Lower courts across the country have handed down conflicting rulings when these laws have been challenged. By and large, district court judges have attempted to block these bans, finding them unconstitutional after applying “heightened scrutiny” — a high legal standard used in civil rights cases that forces the government to prove a vested interest in the application of the law. Appeals court judges, on the other hand, have typically used “rational basis,” a lower form of review, when overturning previous injunctions of these bans.

Chase Strangio, the co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project, said on a press call Monday that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Tennessee, it could “erode protections when it comes to sex-based discrimination,” especially in the context of medical care, long term. Strangio, the first trans lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court, is set to deliver a 15-minute oral argument on behalf of the three families of trans youth and the Memphis-based doctor on Wednesday. However, if the Supreme Court rules as the district courts have by applying “heightened scrutiny,” then it will determine that bans on trans health care constitute sex discrimination, similar to how the high court determined in the Bostock v. Clayton County case that discrimination against trans employees is also sex discrimination.

[...]

Science Versus Skeptics

There is a body of scientific evidence to show that puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy substantially reduce gender dysphoria in adolescent patients, dozens of medical associations argued in briefs submitted to the Supreme Court in September. Doctors, medical groups, LGBTQ+ advocates, Democrats, Republicans and trans individuals have submitted briefs on the efficacy of gender-affirming care to alleviate dysphoria and prevent suicide. However, Tennessee’s brief to the court is skeptical of gender-affirming care. It argues that these medical interventions are “experimental” and claims that at one point a Tennessee hospital, Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center, began providing trans health care in order to “make a lot of money.” The brief discusses at length how certain “media reports” about Vanderbilt providing gender-affirming care to minors exposed the hospital’s true intentions.

[...] United States v. Skrmetti comes at a pivotal time for trans rights in the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “stop” gender-affirming care for minors nationwide, which he has equated to “child abuse” and “sexual mutilation.” The incoming president has also appointed Russell Vought, the co-author of Project 2025, as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump term, includes dozens of policies that erase federal protections for LGBTQ+ people, including allowing Medicare and Medicaid to deny coverage for gender-affirming care and removing trans-inclusive protections from Title IV.

Tomorrow at SCOTUS: a very big case on gender-affirming care will be heard for oral arguments, and it is United States v. Skrmetti. The Skrmetti case is a crucial case to determine the fate of gender-affirming care for trans and gender-expansive youths (and adults).

#LGBTQPeopleAreNotGoingBack

See Also:

The Advocate: What to expect in this week’s landmark gender-affirming care U.S. Supreme Court case

[our-trans-punk-experience]

WARNING for trans america

Regarding the U.S. v. Skrmetti case, which challenges Tenessee state law prohibiting trans youth recieving any affirming medical care, being heard in the supreme court I have this below quote from anti-trans group "Our Duty".

"Various gender critical groups are coordinating a rally that will occur in Washington, D.C. on DECEMBER 4, 2024.  The transgender activists will be there in force, and we need to be there too."

If you were planning to stand in, there will be multiple groups such as Our Duty standing there. Now Our Duty is largely a parent group, so trans youth might want to watch out for that. If your parents ask questions about your experience of transition, be warned that Our Duty files amicus briefs (extra information testimonial petitions) to the supreme court taking testimony from its members about the lives of their trans children. They file similar amicus briefs to any trans-related case in both the US and the UK.

Below is the heading paragraph of the amicus brief they have submitted to the supreme court ahead of the Skrmetti case

"Parents of gender-dysphoric children are given false choices: treat your child with off-label use of cancer-drugs, experimental cross-sex hormones, and surgeries—or lose your child to suicide or the state. Parents seeking to avoid unproven treatments do so in fear of being investigated for abuse and losing custody of their children. To avoid these tragedies, Tennessee and Kentucky enacted statutes (collectively, the “Acts”) to safeguard children’s bodies and futures. See Tenn. Code §§ 68-33-101–110; Ky. Rev. Stat. § 311.372. The Acts are constitutional and should be upheld."

This brief also contains dozens and dozens of parent testimonials about their children's experience. I know none of these children, and some of them very well have simply experimented with gender before concluding they were cis, but many of these seem to be terrifying stories of conversion therapy. And regardless of what truth lies behind these stories, parents second hand testimony of the trans experience should not be used to make life worse for all trans children. Some of these stories are about these peoples children who are actually over 18 and so should not be considered at all in this case. And none of these children gave their consent for their stories to be shared.

At the end of this post i realise it might be a bit incoherent and not exactly follow one thread through. so ask follow ups about the case or about Our Duty if you want and ffs stay safe out there punks, and stay sharp. Tell your friends you love them

[justinssportscorner]

Mira Lazine at LGBTQ Nation:

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall joined 23 other states in filing an amicus brief in support of banning trans girls from sports. Specifically, the brief asks the Supreme Court to review and overturn an injunction placed on Arizona’s ban on transgender athletes by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Marshall wrote the brief alongside Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin and with support from Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. The court instituted the injunction in September in a 3-0 decision in response to Arizona’s Save Women’s Sports Act, which enacted a blanket ban on transgender girls in girls’ sports, regardless of how long they had been transitioning and if they were on puberty blockers. The plaintiffs in the case were two trans girls and their parents suing to overturn the law.

[...]

The amicus brief makes several arguments in favor of banning transgender girls from sports. One such claim is that it would be expensive and difficult for schools to implement policies allowing trans girls to participate on girls’ sports teams – an argument that ignores the ease with which many schools across the country have implemented trans-friendly policies.

The brief also argues that sex is not equivalent to gender identity under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution – a claim that ignores established precedent from the Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, which ruled that trans people are subject to sex-based protections due to their gender modality. The Attorneys General then make two legal arguments, claiming that the Circuit Court made its decision on erroneous grounds and that other readings of the law may be more plausible. They also argue that a rational-basis review is required to determine if the plaintiffs’ claim is underinclusive. This means that an additional overview, informed by constitutional law, would be done to determine if the argument being made is internally consistent with equal protection – if not, it would get thrown out. It is unclear whether these arguments will hold up in court. SCOTUS has given no public indication of whether it will take this case. It has already accepted the case of United States v. Skrmetti, which will determine whether states can legally ban gender-affirming care for minors.

There is no evidence that transgender girls have a significant biological advantage in sports. Rather, evidence suggests that transitioning levels the playing field.

24 Republican Attorneys General file transphobia-fueled amicus brief in Petersen v. Doe to convince the MAGA majority on SCOTUS to uphold bigoted bans on trans women from women’s sports that has zero to with “protecting women’s sports” and “competitive fairness.”

[darkmaga-returns]

During oral arguments before the Supreme Court last week in U.S. v. Skrmetti, it became clear that the dispute is over more than just gender medicine — it’s about a realignment of medicine’s purpose. The case examines the constitutionality of Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming treatments for minors. The prosecution claims such treatments are medically necessary, and banning them constitutes sex discrimination against children seeking such treatments to align their bodies more closely to their chosen gender.

Medical necessity has traditionally meant targeting disease processes to achieve physiological health. Transgender treatments such as hormones instead disrupt physiological health to achieve a body that aligns with a patient’s mental state. This new direction mandates that doctors adjust their risk assessment to accept iatrogenic side effects as a necessary cost of treating patients. This is in stark contrast to the traditional “do no harm” approach that doctors are bound to by oath, cracking medicine’s foundational integrity.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested an acceptance of potential harms from gender-affirming treatments by interjecting the Tennessee solicitor general’s discussion of the risks with, “Every medical treatment has a risk, even taking aspirin.”

Aspirin can be dangerous when taken inappropriately or by those with an allergy, but the risks and benefits have been studied since the 1800s. Aspirin aligns a diseased body with a healthier physiology through the reduction of inflammation, while its anti-platelet activity lessens the formation of harmful blood clots. Patients prescribed aspirin have been diagnosed with a condition necessitating its functions.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Leor Sapir

Published: Dec 5, 2024

An astonishing moment took place yesterday at the Supreme Court during oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, the case that challenges Tennessee’s ban on pediatric sex “change” procedures. Chase Strangio, the American Civil Liberties Union’s attorney, admitted to Justice Samuel Alito that the narrative around the risk of suicide in transgender-identified youth is false.

Before Alito and Strangio’s exchange, Justice Sonia Sotomayor had asked U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar about minors with gender dysphoria who “attempt suicide.” Prelogar responded that the “rates of suicide”—not “attempts,” but actual death by suicide—in that population “are striking.” Given the government’s support for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as treatments for gender dysphoric youth, the clear implication of Prelogar’s remarks was that such interventions are known to prevent these tragic and, in her view, common events.

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Some—some children suffer incredibly with gender dysphoria, don’t they? GENERAL PRELOGAR: Yes. It’s a very serious medical condition. JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: I think some attempt suicide? GENERAL PRELOGAR: Yes. The rates of suicide are—are striking—

This claim—that rates of suicide among gender-dysphoric young people are high—constitutes the trans suicide myth.

When it was Strangio’s turn, Justice Alito asked, “Do you maintain that the procedures and medications in question reduce the risk of suicide?” The transgender-identifying attorney responded:

MR. STRANGIO: I do, Justice Alito, maintain that the medications in question reduce the risk of depression, anxiety, and suicidality, which are all indicators of potential suicide.

Note that Alito asked about suicide, and Strangio answered about suicidality—the latter of which refers to thoughts of or intent to attempt suicide. Though suicide would be preceded by suicidality, research does not show that suicidality is a reliable predictor of suicide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2022, for every one person who committed suicide, 270 people “seriously thought about suicide” and 33 attempted it.

Strangio’s pivot to suicidality is a standard tactic of gender medicine activists in public debates. They exploit public ignorance about the difference between suicidality—thinking about suicide, attempting suicide, using gestures of self-harm as a cry for help or as a form of emotional manipulation—and actual death by suicide.

Unfortunately for Strangio, Justice Alito had done his homework. Citing the U.K.’s Cass Review, Alito observed that “there is no evidence that gender-affirmative treatments reduce suicide.”

Then came Strangio’s remarkable concession:

MR. STRANGIO: What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some—in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare and we’re talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don’t necessarily have completed suicides within them. However, there are multiple studies, long-term longitudinal studies that do show that there is a reduction in—in suicidality . . .

Here, the ACLU’s star attorney on trans issues seems to be at odds with Solicitor General Prelogar, who had said that the “rates” of “suicide” among gender-dysphoric youth were “striking.” Strangio admits, under oath, that suicide is actually “rare,” and that the research purporting to demonstrate benefits from hormones concerns suicidality, not suicide. Strangio’s use of “admittedly” is also striking, as it suggests the attorney is aware that claims about suicide prevention through sex “change” are false.

Strangio’s claim that the evidence shows these treatments reduce suicidality is also false. Some studies claim to find that, but existing systematic reviews of evidence have concluded that these claims are not credible due to methodological problems in the research. The Cass Review explicitly cites “major methodological problems” as a reason to be skeptical of studies claiming that “gender-affirming care” reduces “suicidality.” I suspect that Strangio knows this, as well.

None of this means that we shouldn’t take suicidal attempts or ideation seriously. Of course we should. But to equate these behaviors with completed suicide and to use that equivalence as a justification for harmful and experimental treatments on vulnerable adolescents is extremely irresponsible.

It’s hard to exaggerate the importance of Strangio’s concessions yesterday. Transgender activists and their media allies, gender clinicians, and Democrats have consistently and emphatically told the public that suicide is a serious risk for transgender-identified youth and that “gender-affirming care” is necessary to mitigate that risk.

Strangio’s ACLU itself has said this on many occasions, as I previously reported. The ACLU of Wisconsin, for instance, issued a press release in 2023, stating: “Research shows it [denying youth access to ‘gender-affirming care’] contributes to… suicide. On the contrary, transgender youth whose families support their gender identity have a 52% decrease in suicidal thoughts [and] a 48% decrease in suicide attempts.” The following year, the ACLU of South Carolina quoted a physician who said, “Gender-affirming care is life-saving suicide prevention care.”

More egregiously, clinicians have used the suicide threat to cajole parents into agreeing to irreversible medical interventions that can potentially leave their kids sterile, sexually dysfunctional, disfigured, and with lifelong impacts on bone and cardiovascular health. “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live transgender son?” they ask the parents, sometimes in front of the child.

Crucially, the risk these activists invoke is suicide, not suicidality. Parents are asked to weigh the amputation of their daughters’ breasts or the sterilization of their sons against losing their kids to suicide—any parent’s worst nightmare. If the risk in question were suicidality, that would likely change their calculus.

Consider, as a representative example of activists’ claims, these remarks by Diane Ehrensaft, a San Francisco-based psychologist and pioneer of the “gender-affirming” approach in the United States, in her 2016 book, The Gender Creative Child:

Time and again I watch youth weigh keeping their fertility options open against postponing obtaining their true gender identity, and time and again I watch the decision to affirm their gender and forgo fertility win out. Can a thirteen-year-old truly know that? Yes, I think so, in the same way that a thirteen-year-old is capable of making a choice that will save their life even if it means losing a limb or living with one kidney. We could say, “Well, yes, but that’s a matter of life and death.” So is this for many gender creative youth—to affirm their gender or face crushing despair.

The existing research on the link between gender-related distress and suicide undermines this claim. It includes four findings: first, individuals who identify as transgender or experience distress associated with their sex are at higher risk of suicide than age-matched controls. Second, however, that risk, though elevated, is quite low, as Strangio now concedes. (For example, the suicide rate among youths referred to the U.K.’s Gender Identity Development Service between 2010 and 2020 was 0.03 percent.) Third, the elevated risk is best explained by psychiatric comorbidities, which are extremely common in this population and hypothesized to contribute to transgender identification in youth. Fourth, adults who undergo full “gender reassignment” remain at elevated risk for suicide relative to matched controls even years after their procedures.

Suicide, in other words, is a complex problem that requires nuance and understanding. Suicide-prevention experts have long argued that talking about suicide in the way that Strangio and the ACLU have done is irresponsible: suicide is a socially contagious behavior, and telling youth in distress that it is the expected response to their problems can encourage the very behavior these activists purportedly want to prevent.

In 2017, major LGBT rights organizations partnered with suicide prevention experts and groups to produce a guideline for how to discuss suicide in this population. Among their recommendations:

DON’T attribute a suicide death to a single factor (such as bullying or discrimination) or say that a specific anti-LGBT law or policy will “cause” suicide. Suicide deaths are almost always the result of multiple overlapping causes, including mental health issues that might not have been recognized or treated. Linking suicide directly to external factors like bullying, discrimination or anti-LGBT laws can normalize suicide by suggesting that it is a natural reaction to such experiences or laws. It can also increase suicide risk by leading at-risk individuals to identify with the experiences of those who have died by suicide.

I have since come to learn—through a source close to the movement with contacts at the ACLU—that suicide researchers supportive of LGBT rights are deeply concerned with how transgender activists like Strangio have bullied advocacy group leaders and manipulated the suicide issue to serve their own personal agendas. Strangio and other transgender activists are continuously undermining public trust in the ability of these groups to generate or endorse credible suicide prevention guidelines.

But the narrative is too politically useful for many of these activists to abandon. Shorn of any ability to persuade the public of their incoherent ideas about sex and gender, and unconcerned that their practices violate centuries of accumulated knowledge about healthy child development, transgender activists need the suicide narrative to be true—or at least believable.  How else can they get parents to submit their kids to the cult of the scalpel and syringe?

[jacksproject2025]

The endgame of what Chase Strangio and “their” allies are arguing for is child traffickers being allowed—under the law—to manufacture mutilated and fully groomed partners for perverted adults.

[intransheart]

U.S. v. Skrmetti Listening Party

We had cute listen party last night discussing the U.S. vs. Skrmetti case

Understanding U.S. v. Skrmetti and Its Impact on Transgender Rights The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, a case challenging Tennessee’s SB1, a law banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. The case has become a landmark moment for LGBTQ+ rights, with the central issue being whether this law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth…

[protoslacker]

Imani Gandy and Jessica Pieklo are so good! If you've never listened to Boom! Lawyered before, they sometimes use profanity. My opinion of that is they use profanity very well. But for some people the sounds of bad words are so loud they can't hear anything over them. The podcast isn't for them. But if the word "bullshit!" doesn't scare you off and if you want to know how the arguments in the landmark transgender rights case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, went before the U.S. Supreme Court went, there's is essential reporting.

For more about the case red: ACLU Attorney Chase Strangio Will Present Argument at Supreme Court on Behalf of Private Plaintiffs in Upcoming Landmark Transgender Rights Case.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mira Lazine at LGBTQ Nation:

Yesterday, nearly 200 Democrats and Republicans wrote amicus briefs asking the Supreme Court to rule in favor of transgender rights in the upcoming L.W. v. Skrmetti case, which challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. It is the first such case that the Supreme Court is hearing. “While the government has a role in keeping kids safe, that role is limited, and it does not justify the State second-guessing the judgments of parents acting in good faith who are best positioned to know what their children need,” the Republican signatories wrote in their brief. “States have no business overruling the decisions of fit parents who make an informed medical choice for their children that is supported by their doctors, by the medical profession more generally, by the children themselves, and by their conscience.”

The Republican brief was signed by numerous former and current Republican politicians and notable officials like Kentucky state Rep. Kim Banta; former U.S. Reps. Barbara Comstock (R-VA), Denver Riggleman (R-VA), and Deborah Price (R-OH); former Republican National Committee National Press Secretary Kirsten Kukowski; Republican campaign manager Colin Reed; and the late Sen. John McCain’s chief of staff and advisor Mark Salter. It was also notably signed by former Rep. Ilena Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the mother of Advocates for Trans Equality executive director Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen.

[...] 164 Democratic legislators signed their brief. The group was made up of 11 U.S. senators and 153 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and their brief stressed the discriminatory nature of Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban. “The current rash of bills targeting transgender people is merely the latest round of discrimination faced by transgender individuals. Lower courts have cataloged the “widespread private opprobrium and governmental discrimination” faced by transgender individuals,” they wrote in their brief. “But amici believe enough is enough. Tennessee has no ‘proper legislative end but to make [transgender adolescents] unequal to everyone else. This [Tennessee] cannot do.’—so the Court should reverse.” The politicians seen in this brief include Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), among others. They also argue that animosity towards trans people played a large role in passing Tennessee’s bill. They note that Tennessee is a “hotbed” for such animosity, having nearly twice as many anti-LGBTQ+ laws as any other state. They refer to hateful rhetoric from Tennessee politicians. The core argument in this brief is that there is a medical consensus that gender-affirming care is safe, medically necessary, and backed by numerous reputable organizations across the United States and the world. They argue Tennessee is discriminating against transgender individuals by blocking them from accessing safe and effective health care. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Human Rights Campaign both supported the brief.

Nearly 200 Democrats and Republicans filed amicus briefs in support of gender-affirming care in the United States v. Skrmetti (L.W. v. Skrmetti) case, with 164 of those being Democrats.

These are just two of the pro-trans amicus briefs filed in Skrmetti.

See Also:

Erin In The Morning: Families Split Apart: Families Fleeing Anti-Trans Laws File Amicus In Supreme Court Case

[cultml]

The second issue is the effectiveness of transgender medical care.  Do children who are given puberty-blockers really benefit from the treatment?  What are the short-term and long-term risks of puberty-blockers?  What are the effects of cross-sex hormones in patients, especially children?  What effect do cross-sex hormones have on fertility, metabolism, bone strength, cancer risk, and long-term psychological health?...

The third issue is the ethics of transgender treatments, irrespective of the philosophical and scientific rationale for the treatments.  Is it ethical to destroy normal body parts and functions with drugs and surgery?....