In a surprising turn in Boe v. Marshall, U.S. District Judge Liles C. Burke ordered the World Professional Association for Transgender Health to release recordings of presentations and discussions from the organization’s conferences from 2021-2023. The judge also ordered WPATH to release recordings from a 2023 training course for physicians. Although the case was voluntarily dismissed in early May after the plaintiffs challenging Alabama’s law prohibiting sex-rejecting procedures for minors dropped their challenge, the court reasoned that acquiring the WPATH documents was consistent with its “post-dismissal obligations.” Although WPATH was not a party in the case, expert witnesses often favorably cite its guidelines for the treatment of sex-distress, making the development of the guidelines relevant to the state’s defense of its law. WPATH was not eager to release documents, however, and tried to argue that the materials were confidential. “Given this wide acceptance of what WPATH claims to be reliable evidence, one would think it would be willing and eager to demonstrate as much,” Judge Burke wrote.
On Tuesday, Senate Democrats filed the Fit to Serve Act, which is designed to reverse the impact of the Trump administration’s EO on Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness. That EO prohibits gender dysphoric troops from serving in the U.S. military. If passed, the bill would allow the trans-identified to continue to serve in the military, and it would also prohibit the Defense Department from denying healthcare based on “gender identity,” or from discriminating based on “gender identity” more broadly. The Pentagon’s ban went into effect in May after the Supreme Court determined that the administration could enforce its policy on trans-identified troops.
A trans-identified army veteran has launched a suit against the Department of Veteran Affairs for cancelling their coverage of “affirming care” interventions. Ms. Jane Doe is represented by the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School, who argue that the VA’s policy amounts to a discriminatory health ban that violates the Constitution and federal laws. In March, Veteran Affairs Secretary Doug Collins withdrew the VA’s policy covering hormone replacement therapy for trans-identified veterans.
Facing increasing pressure from the federal government on multiple fronts, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles will close its Center for Transyouth Health and Development later this summer. While the hospital briefly halted treatment for dysphoric minors shortly after the announcement of Trump’s EO targeting the federal funding of sex-rejecting procedures, it reversed its position some weeks later. In an email hospital executives sent to staff, they explained their calculus as follows: “Taken together, the Attorney General memo, HHS review, and the recent solicitation of tips from the FBI to report hospitals and providers of GAC strongly signal this Administration’s intent to take swift and decisive action, both criminal and civil, against any entity it views as being in violation of the executive order.” The California Justice Department has yet to weigh in.
Eliza Mondegreen writes about her initial impressions of the New York Times’ new podcast on the origins of pediatric gender medicine, the Protocol, and comes away feeling jaded about the prospect of the field ever facing a full reckoning, or the public receiving a full “radical accounting of what went wrong.” In Mondegreen’s estimation, the tone and framing of the podcast seem designed to assuage and contain the guilt of sympathetic liberals rather than to help them understand or question the underlying logic of the field. “Ghorayshi finally acknowledges the discomfort many New York Times readers feel when they think about pediatric gender medicine, and then immediately contains that discomfort: you feel uncomfortable because some gender clinicians took things too far. But there’s nothing else to see here. These interventions were well-founded, they were absolutely appropriate for some kids—maybe they were appropriate for your kids, too!” Mondegreen also takes the podcast to task for not pushing back against the radical claims of clinicians. “But if you can’t ask uncomfortable questions, don’t be a reporter. Serve ice cream, answer phones, write the kind of upbeat, impersonal messages that line greeting cards, I don’t know. But don’t bother with journalism” Mondegreen writes.
Findings from a high-profile NIH-funded study investigating the impact of puberty blockers on youth with gender dysphoria have finally become available, with the paper determining that depression symptoms in dysphoric adolescents remained unchanged after two years on blockers. The study originally attracted media attention in October after one of the study authors Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy told the New York Times that she and her co-authors delayed publishing their findings because they feared that their work would be “weaponized” in the culture wars, prompting investigations by the U.S. Senate over the misuse of taxpayer funds. Notably, while Dutch researchers controversially claimed mental functioning improved after puberty blockade, British researchers were unable to replicate these findings. Instead of conceding that puberty blockers did not show mental health benefits in line with her hypothesis, though, Olson-Kennedy maintains that “it is likely that puberty blockers prevent the deterioration of mental health.” Despite the documented physical health risks of blockers, they are often still recommended despite muddled clinical and ethical justifications.
A new paper co-authored by Dr. Hillary Cass in the American Journal of Bioethics responds to misinformation surrounding the UK’s Cass Review and corrects the record. The authors note that medicine is no stranger to fierce debate about the best treatment pathway for a particular condition, however, the care of “young people with gender incongruence or dysphoria has been characterized by polarized social and political debate overshadowing the scientific process.” The authors also explain how independent reviews work in the UK context. While Cass’s lack of experience treating dysphoria is often cited by American critics as an obstacle to achieving an impartial review, the authors explain how review chairs are expected to be independent and not to have obvious intellectual ties to the subject in question. The authors also tackle ethical confusion surrounding the treatment of dysphoria and argue that “The quality of research in this area would not be deemed acceptable for children and young people receiving chemotherapy, psychotropic medications or cardiac surgery; it should not be acceptable for this already disadvantaged group of young people.”
According to a new Gallup poll, roughly two-thirds of Americans support policies where sex takes precedence over “gender identity.” Specifically, 66% of Americans support sports participation based on sex rather than “gender identity” while 69% support government documents recording sex rather than “gender identity.” Not surprisingly, while the views of independents were roughly like the national averages, Republicans showed the most support (9 in 10) and Democrats the least (4 in 10). This is the first time a question about government documents was asked, however, the sports question is now on its third iteration. Since the sports question was first asked in 2021, support for athletes competing on teams based on “gender identity” has fallen by ten points.
In City Journal, Colin Wright outlines several conceptual problems with a recent open letter challenging the UK Supreme Court’s ruling that sex in the Equality Act refers to biological sex rather than “gender identity.” The letter argues that the ruling fails to account for the complex realities of sex. Wright begins by taking the authors to task for their deceptive title (biology is not binary), which he argues is meant to distract us from the specific meaning of sex by hoping readers will “conflate sexual dimorphism (physical and behavioral differences between males and females) with sex itself.” As Wright notes, sex-related traits exist on a continuum, but sex–defined by the type of gamete an individual has the biological function to produce–does not. Wright also goes on to address three related critiques advanced by the authors. “Public policy must reflect truths about the world, not what’s politically fashionable. There are two sexes, male and female, and this truth remains intact no matter how many open letters are signed to the contrary” Wright concludes.
Joseph Figliolia
Policy Analyst
