The Supreme Court has upheld Tennessee’s restrictions on minor’s receiving transgender medical procedures. Read it for yourself and discuss here:
SCOTUS Upholds Tennessee Restrictions on Transgender Treatments for MinorsFrom SCOTUSBlog:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender teenagers. By a vote of 6-3, the justices rejected an argument by three transgender teens (along with their parents and a Memphis doctor) that the law violates their constitutional right to equal protection and should be scrutinized using a more stringent standard than the one used by a federal appeals court in Cincinnati.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged that the dispute “carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field.” But the court’s only role, he said, is to ensure that the Tennessee law does not violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. “Having concluded that it does not,” he wrote, “we leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives, and the democratic process.”
The court’s Democratic appointees dissented from the decision. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the court’s ruling “authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them.”
According to KFF, more than half the states have laws similar to Tennessee’s. The decision also comes just under five months after President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders affecting the rights of LGBTQ+ people – and, in particular, transgender people. One such order, signed on Jan. 28, seeks to restrict the availability of certain medical treatment for transgender people under the age of 19.
The Biden administration joined the transgender teens in their challenge to the Tennessee law. But in early February, the Trump administration took a different position, telling the justices that it had determined that the law does not violate the right to equal protection. It “would not have intervened to challenge” the law, much less asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, it wrote in a letter on Feb. 7.
Tennessee’s legislature passed the law, known as SB1, in 2023. SB1 emphasizes that the state has a “legitimate, substantial, and compelling interest in encouraging minors to appreciate their sex, particularly as they undergo puberty.” It prohibits (as relevant here) the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender teens while allowing the use of the same treatments for other purposes.
U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson put the ban on hold. He concluded that the treatments at the center of the dispute are “safe, effective, and comparable in both risk profile and efficacy to many other forms of pediatric medicine that Tennessee permits.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reversed Richardson’s ruling and upheld the ban. It relied on a less stringent standard of review, known as “rational basis” review, which asks whether the law is rationally related to a legitimate government interest.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court affirmed the 6th Circuit’s ruling.
This made me wonder about the oral arguments so I found a transcript.
One of the arguments that I’ve seen on twitter says something to the effect of “this is why it’s important to not shut these discussions down entirely… you don’t want the first time you encounter a robust counter-argument to be in front of the Supreme Court.”
Another was given in a response to McMegan:
The reason they went with this case is because, as bad as it was, it’s less bad than the Alabama case.
There is no robust counter argument to allowing parents, doctors and psychologists to work as a team to support and nurture a child.
I believe that the robust counter argument is something to the effect of “there is a robust counter argument to allowing parents, doctors, and psychologists to work as a team to harm a child”.
I mean, you wouldn’t allow leeches, would you? A lobotomy?
Even if doctors agreed that leeches reduce blood in the system when there is an obvious professional diagnosis of “excess humors”?
The problem with that deeply ignorant and highly flawed “argument” is it is moral judgement attempting to pass as factual determination. It’s wrong I. Its face, its repugnant scientifically and coming from the same
People who want to force their views onto me of what is an acceptable library book for my children to have access to, it’s anti-thetical to personal freedom, much less collective liberty.
It’s a toddlers tantrum from small weak people who can’t stand being not in control. It doesn’t deserve our brain cells much less SCOTUS approval.
As emotive as that language is, it fails to take into account the walkback being made in Europe over these treatments following scientific inquiry.
Like, this is something that is seriously happening. The fact that religious people also agree with them does not make the science they’re doing in Europe less scientific (nor does it make your emoting less emotive).
That fact that you misrepresent what is happening in Europe and the science underlying it doesn’t make it any more a driver for this then does your oblique desire to give conservativs a pass for their egregious behavior.
I’ve already linked to the transcript, Phil.
If you want to argue that the lawyers who stood in front of the Supreme Court made a dog’s breakfast of their own arguments in the face of robust counter-argument, well…
Welcome to my argument.
Those damn socialists! What policies will the American right emulate next?
Deciding whether or not science is accurate to the economic system of the government where the science was done is a good way to end up with bad outcomes that aren’t scientific at all.
As emotive as that language is, it fails to take into account the walkback being made in Europe over these treatments following scientific inquiry.
Like, this is something that is seriously happening. The fact that religious people also agree with them does not make the science they’re doing in Europe less scientific (nor does it make your emoting less emotive).
Jesus F*cking Christ.
Jaybird, you are being lied to. Just, flatly, lied to.
‘Europe’ is doing no such thing, at all. Indeed, the mere fact you’re talking about ‘Europe’ instead of specific countries should clue you in on that: https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/new-german-swiss-and-austria-guidelines
France and Spain also are not ‘pulling back’ in any sense.
So who is this ‘Europe’ you reading lies about? Well, it’s a misrepresentation of what happened in Norway: https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-norway-not-ban-gender-affirming-care-956221436313
…and…it’s the UK. Which has the exact sort of bigoted political nonsense as is happening in the US.
That’s it. That’s the ‘Europe’ that is pulling back.
Oh, Erin Reed! I’m certain to get an unbiased take!
What’s Erin’s take on the recent ruling… ah, here it is: After Getting The Ruling It Wanted, New York Times Publishes 6 Anti-Trans Articles.
Subhed: “The paper has lost all claim to objectivity on transgender people.”
I wonder what objectivity would look like on this topic…
Anyway, what happened in Norway sure as heck looks like a “walking back”. What term would you prefer I use instead?
It’s literally in the article I linked:
Instead, the headline and social media users are misrepresenting recommendations made by an outside advisory board.
An independent organization, The Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board, released a report in March that recommended increased regulations for such care. The report did not propose an outright ban on any treatment, and the board does not have the authority to enact any of its proposals.
Is this not clear yet?
Erin Reed
Are you asserting she is _misquoting_ the report when she quotes it as saying ‘If, in individual cases, the progressive pubertal maturation development creates a time pressure in which health damage would be expected due to longer waiting times to avert irreversible bodily changes (e.g. male voice change), access to child and adolescent psychiatric or psychotherapeutic clarification and medical treatment options should be granted as quickly as possible.’
BTW, can I just say how awesome it is for the media to be operating a concentrated anti-trans effort that is, again _literally lying to you_ , as I pointed out, and for you to dismiss outsiders just because of how they are.
Yeah, my statement was not “the board enacted it’s proposals”. It’s that stuff was being walked back.
If you don’t like “walked back”, what term would you prefer I use instead?
I’m not convinced that the New York Times is part of an anti-trans conspiracy. This goes back to the whole “what does objectivity look like?” thing.
Does it look like agreeing with you? Because, if that’s what objectivity looks like, there is a *LOT* of people who aren’t objective. At all.
Hey, since we’re taking turns quoting activists, did you see the Brianna Wu tweet yet?
If you don’t like “walked back”, what term would you prefer I use instead?
I always make this mistake, I always try to get in front of the discussion.
Let’s forget I mentioned anything. Instead, why don’t you describe what you’re even _talking about_, first?
You said there ‘walkback being made in Europe over these treatments following scientific inquiry.’
Please point what you are talking about, in a way that isn’t just a vague handwave at dozen of countries.
Once you have pointed at examples of this walkback, we can then debate those example. But you have to provide them to start with. After all, it is your assertion that they exist. Should be easy to come up with examples, right?
I’m willing to bet you can’t even come up with things to list that is not the UK and the bad example of Norway. Let’s see if you do.
When it comes to Norway, I’m talking about how a watchdog agency said something to the effect of “hey, guys? There hasn’t been a whole lot of actual science done on this stuff. Maybe we should slow down.”
If you want a direct quotation:
Actual science.
That is significantly different than the “full steam ahead” thing that the objective people are pushing for.
As for things to list that ain’t the UK/Norway, all you have to do is google “trans rights setback EU” and you can get stuff like this or this.
Seriously.
Actual science.
Falsely asserting there isn’t science isn’t science.
There is, as the Utah report pointed out, there is actually a lot of science about this, despite everyone claiming otherwise.
Here, have the link here too: https://le.utah.gov/AgencyRP/reportingDetail.jsp?rid=636
It’s a thousand pages, you might want to Ctrl-F to ‘I.6.0 CONCLUSIONS.’
The conventional wisdom among non-experts has long been that there are limited data on the use of GAHT in pediatric patients with GD. However, results from our exhaustive literature searches have led us to the opposite conclusion.
We found more than 277 individual, full-text citations that met eligibility for study design, population, and treatments of interest, including N=230 primary clinical studies reporting on the patient-level experience of at least N=28,056 pediatric GD patients all over the world.
Why, it’s almost as if there have been _hundreds_ of studies on this, and the people claiming otherwise are lying for political reason.
As for things to list that ain’t the UK/Norway, all you have to do is google “trans rights setback EU” and you can get stuff like this or this.
This was your original claim, Jaybird, have you forgotten it?
As emotive as that language is, it fails to take into account the walkback being made in Europe over these treatments following scientific inquiry.
The article you cited ‘TGEU noted that the countries of Georgia and Hungary recently introduced anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ constitutional amendments, Republika Srpska (Bosnia) repealed hate crimes and hate speech protections, and the U.K. Supreme Court recently struck down trans anti-discrimination protections. Only one Asian nation, Kazakhstan, still provides legal recognition of trans people, TGUE added.’ That’s what it’s talking about.
So you are pointing to examples of _discrimination_, things like government removing anti-trans discrimination laws and recogniziation of trans people and think those laws are somehow ‘science’ having to do with the treatment of trans children?
You think THAT is the same thing?
No, I don’t think it’s the same thing as walking back the trans stuff the way that Norway’s watchdog agency suggested.
And I think that conflating the two things will result in, well, more of the same.
Have you read through Brianna’s timeline? The last day or so has some interesting perspective on this (even if she is a truscum).
And I think that conflating the two things will result in, well, more of the same.
…you are the one who conflated them, Jaybird.
Hey, Jaybird, you heard of the Cass Review?
Do you know what it recommended?
I bet you think it recommended walking back healthcare for trans kids, don’t you?
Would you be startled to learn it doesn’t, and actually doesn’t recommend changing the guidelines at all?
There’s actually no country in the world that has pulled back on trans healthcare for minors _due to medical recommendations_ by anyone.
There are several countries that have pulled it back for what are very clearly political considerations, and I say that not as an opinion, because those very countries have started debating if trans people exist at all, or just declared they didn’t.
Have you read through Brianna’s timeline? The last day or so has some interesting perspective on this (even if she is a truscum).
No she doesn’t.
I’m not convinced that the New York Times is part of an anti-trans conspiracy.
You can be ‘not convinced’ all you want. It is not my job to convince you.
But here’s a link anyway:
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/15/1157181127/nyt-letter-trans
Oh, an NPR report from 2023 that has objective people attacking the subjective folks at the NYT?
Ah, Lena Dunham. You don’t hear that name much these days.
I think the Arkansas case makes it obvious where this is going. The more sympathetic proponents of this sort of thing are going to be conclusively shown to be well meaning eccentrics, captured by a cause, and unable to understand that their evidence is circular and self referential, with precious little substance. The less sympathetic? That part is not going to be pretty. Not at all.
*Alabama.
(We got the spirit of what you were saying.)
The more sympathetic proponents of this sort of thing are going to be conclusively shown to be well meaning eccentrics, captured by a cause, and unable to understand that their evidence is circular and self referential, with precious little substance.
Man, if only one of the state that wanted to ban medical care for trans kids had commissioned a report to look into all this. And if only it had returned results just a few months ago, talking about what level scientific evidence there was both for and against it.
But of course, one did. Which I’m sure you know about, because the media, which has been ‘just asking questions’ for quite some time, surely would have COVERED this. And surely yo,, being interested in this topic, would know about it.
But maybe people who seem to know a lot about this have not bothered to look into the conclusions yet. Let me list them.
“The conventional wisdom among non-experts has long been that there are limited data on the use of GAHT in pediatric patients with GD. However, results from our exhaustive literature searches have led us to the opposite conclusion.”
Well, it’s a little weird we already _did_ know this stuff. But, anyway, what did we already know?
“The consensus of the evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes, and the induction of body changes consistent with the affirmed gender in pediatric GD patients. The evidence also supports that the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic changes, and cancer.”
So, all the health concerns are bogus. Okay. What else?
“We found (based on the N=32 studies that addressed it) that there is virtually no regret associated with receiving the treatments, even in the very small percentages of patients who ultimately discontinued them. Reasons for discontinuing GAHT are varied, but changed minds about gender identities is only a very minor proportion overall.”
Ahs, so it turns out that not only do only a very small percentage of patients discontinue treatment on hormone blockers, but they aren’t discontinuing it because they aren’t trans, but for other reasons, perhaps money or that medical treatment may be interfering with a different one.
“It is our expert opinion that policies to prevent access to and use of GAHT for treatment of GD in pediatric patients cannot be justified based on the quantity or quality of medical science findings or concerns about potential regret in the future, and that high-quality guidelines are available to guide qualified providers in treating pediatric patients who meet diagnostic criteria.”
Cannot be justified.
Straight up. Policies be justified.
Signed…the Utah Department of Health and Human Services
https://le.utah.gov/AgencyRP/reportingDetail.jsp?rid=636
But you all know this, right? You aren’t all jabbering endless about repeated prejudices you’ve been told by the coordinated attempt to harm trans people, repeating ‘Europe’ and ‘lack of evidence’.
Heh as I’ve said before, I’m probably still a no vote on a law like TN’s, though I may be getting closer to a yes, as the record continues to develop. If, whenever these WPATH records are released it turns out that the worst rumors about it are true then I would say it’s officially time to shut this stuff down.
As it stands today I think a reasonable legislator can weigh the Utah report against the ever growing number of others that suggest there is a real problem with what’s going on in this area of medicine and decide to err on the side of caution, and that such an act would not violate the US constitution. At the end of the day no one is harmed by waiting until 18.
Here’s a thread with some reasons not to take the Utah review as the final answer: https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1926704468336242779
I’m keeping an open mind, though comments like DavidTC’s make it hard to do that sometimes. If we could somehow shut down the extremists on both sides, it would be easier to figure out what’s reasonable.
Firstly, he’s wrong, no one is required to register systemic reviews with PROSPERO.
Secondly, I think it’s worth actually reading that, because people might realize what the trick is:
Essentially, this report is a narrative review that summarizes the bulk of the research in this field. But it does not seek, like all the actual systematic literature reviews have, to make sense of whether that research is reliable and whether it can properly guide doctors and families in making a solid calculation about the risks vs benefits of these drugs when given to children.
See, the thing is, there is a bunch of research saying that everything in the Utah report. Like, a _ton_ of it.
And there _isn’t_ any actual research contradicting anything in the Utah report. None.
This is not competing debates about research, literally all research that has ever been done on this, followup studies for kids who were in gender affirming care and had puberty blockers and social support, have all concluded positive results. All the studies have all concluded that puberty blockers keep the mental health of trans kids from declining, they have all show that detransition is very rare and regret is even rarer.
They have never even found a single instance of going on and later off blockers causing infertility, because that was mostly a hypothetical invented out of thin air. (Of course, that would be incredibly hard to actually track down because most kids who go on blockers are _actually trans_ and eventually go on hormones, and those do indeed cause infertility. Basically, there’s not even a sample size large enough to even determine this.)
That it. That’s what all the research, every study, indicates.
And the trick, these people just keep insisting those studies are not good enough, that they are not high quality enough, and we need more studies. Always more studies.
Meanwhile, there are literally _no_ studies on their side. Not a single one concluding this is harmful or has no effect or _anything_. But apparently we should make medical decisions based on their ideas that Maybe Bad Things…until these hypothetical ‘more studies’ finish, which of course they can’t do because the treatments are being banned.
Everyone here who thinks there’s a controversy about the _medicine_ are the same sort of dopes who think there’s a controversy about smoking causing cancer.
If, whenever these WPATH records are released it turns out that the worst rumors about it are true then I would say it’s officially time to shut this stuff down.
Oh, yes, the rumors about records.
As it stands today I think a reasonable legislator can weigh the Utah report against the ever growing number of others that suggest there is a real problem with what’s going on in this area of medicine and decide to err on the side of caution, and that such an act would not violate the US constitution.
There are not others. There is no evidence. There literally is no actual evidence that the hypothetical harms to puberty blockers even _exist_, as the Utah report points out.
Why do you think a treatment that is non-harmful should be allowed to be barred?
At the end of the day no one is harmed by waiting until 18.
There not only is very obvious evidence of harm to mental health, but the fact it will lead to additional surgeries is patently obvious harm.
Another sad day wherein the court substitutes its judgement for parents, doctors and psychologists. All because allowing people to live as their authentic selves scares someone somewhere.
I have a lot of sympathy for that argument.
What gives me pause is we had various trans experts testify to congress that there was no difference between men and women, even in the context of sports. This raises the issue of whether they’re experts in how people should be rather than how they are.
It reminds me a lot of the “believe all women” movement which got rid of due process in college sex cases because women never lie about their sex lives. I.e. they are “experts” in ideology and not science.
That is exactly what is going on in the Alabama case. During discovery the state demanded and apparently obtained recordings of WPATH events and other documents. There is now a fight about whether the information can be made public, with WPATH strongly resisting, including situations where the content is just recorded sessions anyone could pay to attend. Jaybird’s link to Volokh delves deeply into this. We won’t know for sure until it is released, which seems like it may be imminent, but the suspicion is that WPATH doesn’t want this out there because it’s going to expose their experts as a bunch of quacks.
New York Times Magazine has a huge article that really gets into this whole thing and blames Stranglio to the point where I’m reconsidering whether that’s where the blame truly resides.
I think Strangio is a person whose trans identity is nowhere close to the most non-mainstream thing about her.
That said, while she may have made some questionable decisions as an attorney and an activist, I don’t think it’s really relevant to the larger questions in play. If the science behind this, and the personalities involved, are as bad as rumored, then there’s no way any lawyer was going to save them.
Yes, the New York Times will always be very clear the problem is that activists are moving too fast.
You know, when it’s not coddling Na.zis.
You mean like Cuomo?
You do understand me pointing out the New York Times of coddled Na.zis isn’t asserting that everyone they coddle is a Na.zi, right?
I was just trying to get a read of the calibration of your Nazi Detector.
If I wanted to complain about them coddling Coumo, I would have pointed out they were coddling a disgraced sex pest who was forced to resign only four years ago.
But, hey, that’s how they roll: Anything is better than the left.
the problem is that activists are moving too fast.
My impression is the activists are proclaiming their ideology as scientifically proven when it’s not.
Worse, there are some parts of their ideology that are obviously wrong. That’s probably more “obvious” from my 6’8″ point of view than it is for most people but whatever.
We also have a moral panic taking place. We also have the religious right looking for safe enemies to demonize.
Oh please. What most colleges and universities wanted as “due process” over sexual assault was the specific right to deny actual Prosecutors the ability, ya know, actually prosecute crimes. Which sexual assault is.
But sure, let’s keep equating holding college boys accountable for what they do with their “members” and what individual children do in full view and support of their orient, doctors and psychologists.
SMDH.
The changes in due process prevented any challenge to the accuser or review of the evidence. Accusation was, by definition, guilt. There was at least one college with a one hundred percent conviction rate.
Calling this “accountability” is wrong. This happened even when the accused was clearly innocent. At the most extreme even when the accuser agreed they were innocent.
The idea that people don’t lie about their sex lifes is wrong on the face of it, and policies made with that assumption instantly go off the rails. In turn this means the so called “experts” who pushed for this were nothing of the kind.