In a new ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction that preserves “gender affirming care” and “social accommodations” for trans-identified federal inmates. The ruling also grants the plaintiffs’ motion for class action certification. The lawsuit in question–Kingdom v. Trump–challenged the provisions in the Trump administration’s EO 14168, which prohibit the Bureau of Prisons from funding “affirming care” and from housing federal inmates based on “gender identity” rather than sex. In his ruling, Judge Lamberth argues that the policies are arbitrary and in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and that the administration fails to “provide any serious explanation as to why the treatment modalities covered by the Executive Order … should be handled differently than any other mental health intervention.” In his conclusion, Judge Lamberth goes on to speculate that even if the provisions were justified and well-reasoned, they may “nevertheless be constrained by the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, but that is a matter better left for another day.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is requesting tips from the public regarding hospitals, clinics, or individual providers that perform sex-rejecting interventions on minors for the purpose of treating gender dysphoria. According to Axios, the FBI wrote that “As the Attorney General has made clear, we will protect our children and hold accountable those who mutilate them under the guise of gender-affirming care.” Along with recent announcements by the Federal Trade Commission and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services targeting sex-rejecting practices, the FBI announcement adds to a multipronged governmental effort to regulate pediatric gender medicine.
On Thursday, the New Hampshire Senate approved a pair of bills which would prohibit gender dysphoric minors from accessing sex-rejecting hormonal interventions and surgeries. If made law, HB 377 would prevent minors from receiving cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers while HB 712 would prevent minors from accessing “affirming” surgeries. The Senate also added a grandfather clause to HB 377, which would allow dysphoric minors already receiving medical interventions to continue receiving them. The bills will now return to the House for a vote on the amendments added by the Senate.
According to a leaked medical report, the winner of the women’s boxing welterweight gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Imane Khelif, was allowed to participate in the women’s division despite being biologically male. “Chromosome analysis reveals male karyotype” a report from 2023 allegedly states. The same year the report came out, the International Boxing Association disqualified Khelif from competition. For the 2024 Olympics, however, eligibility was determined by the International Olympic Committee which deferred to a patient’s “gender identity” if it corresponded with their passport and they complied with “medical regulations.” “The gender activists who created a political climate in which sex testing was seen as ‘bigoted’ are as culpable as the IOC for the travesty that ensued” J.K. Rowling opined on twitter.
Jesse Singal has released part one of a two-part series highlighting the most inept and bad faith “expert” responses to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ report on best practices for treating youth gender dysphoria. Singal conceptualizes the series as a “jarring case study” in how “experts have mortgaged their authority, leaving the average person simply trying to understand this issue better — not to mention parents and young people considering these treatments — in a very difficult situation.” Part one takes aim at the disingenuous response by the American Academy of Pediatrics, who Singal takes to task for projecting onto the report authors. Singal relitigates the many controversies with the AAP’s 2018 policy statement on affirming care, which is not based on systematic reviews and was written and conceptualized by a single pediatrician, Dr. Jason Rafferty. In addition, Singal highlights the citational issues with the AAP policy statement and takes the “co-authors” to task for putting their names on such an unserious document. “This is a breach of trust. This is an organization projecting authority without earning it, an organization claiming that the HHS team failed to ‘consider the totality of available data,’ when that’s exactly what they do in their active guidance on this subject” Singal muses.
On Thursday, The New York Times released “the Protocol,” a six-part podcast series about the origins of pediatric gender medicine. The name likely takes its inspiration from what is called the Dutch protocol, a treatment protocol developed in the Netherlands that pioneered medical transition for dysphoric minors. The podcast aims to explore the history of gender medicine “where it came from, who it was meant to help, and how it got pulled into a political fight that could end it altogether.”
The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has filed a legal challenge against Alberta’s Bill 26, which regulates pediatric gender medicine in the province by restricting surgical access to adults and limiting access to hormonal interventions to youth who are at least sixteen years of age and meet specific eligibility criteria. The CMA is arguing that the policies violate multiple rights protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The CMA press release remarks that the Alberta policy represents an “unprecedented government intrusion into the physician-patient relationship and requires doctors to follow the law rather than clinical guidelines, the needs of patients and their own conscience.” While concerns about interfering in the physician-patient relationship seem warranted on the surface, this argument presupposes that Bill 26 deprives patients of “medically necessary care.” Of course, supporters of the policies reject this framing considering European medical practice reversals and the consistent findings of systematic reviews which maintain that the evidence for benefits is of very low certainty.
In response to draft guidance by the Danish Health Authority regarding how to treat “gender incongruence,” Denmark’s Autism and Asperger’s Association has expressed concern that pediatric medical transition for neurodivergent youth may be an unethical form of medical conversion therapy. The association goes on to note that autistic and developmentally challenged youth are disproportionately trans-identified and often experience regret at higher rates. Notably, the Danish Health Authority’s guidance also clashes with the stance of the Danish Pediatric Society which, like England’s National Health Service, emphasizes the need for more caution when working with mentally ill or developmentally challenged youth.
Joseph Figliolia
Policy Analyst
