Trans Healthcare

Last week the White House issued a proclamation on trans healthcare and buried in the proclamation was…

Transgender minors have a right to gender-affirming care, Justice Dept. warns states
A letter to state attorneys general hints at legal action if restrictions continue to pass.
The 19th.
By Orion Rummler
April 5, 2022


The Justice Department said last week that states seeking to block transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming care may be violating federal law — and signaled that it is prepared to pursue legal action or support existing litigation against states seeking such restrictions.

In a letter to all state attorneys general, sent on Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV), the Department of Justice (DOJ) asserted that state laws preventing trans minors from accessing gender-affirming care — by blocking parents or guardians from following a medical professional’s advice, as states like Texas and Arkansas have attempted — may infringe on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses.

“It’s probably the most powerful and progressive step we’ve seen on transgender rights ever from the federal government, at least today,” said Ezra Ishmael Young, who teaches constitutional law at Cornell Law School. “But the attorney general did not sign it.” 

[…]

Experts say that the letter effectively warns states that the federal government is unlikely to stand by as bills that restrict transgender minors’ gender-affirming care are signed into law.

This could cost the states billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid funding so I imagine we will see a lot of legal cases over this.

Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) who has been representing LGBTQ+ rights cases for nearly 30 years, said in an email that the letter, and its underlying message that the DOJ is prepared to take action, “is incredibly encouraging.” 

To Minter, the agency’s message is clear: If states enact laws that deny trans youth medically necessary gender-affirming care, the DOJ is prepared to take action through its own litigation or to support outside litigation. 

“This is extremely important — one of the strongest actions short of litigation itself that DOJ can take,” he said. 

In its letter, the DOJ cites Bostock v. Clayton County, the landmark 2020 Supreme Court case that found LGBTQ+ people are protected against work discrimination by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to justify its position that banning gender-affirming care opens states to higher legal scrutiny under the 14th Amendment.

The Republican states continually ignore the Constitution but the problem is that the courts will take years for the cases to wind their way through the system and in the meantime our children suffer.

The conservatives cry “activist judges” when they enforce the law. The Supreme Court interprets the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment quite distinctly says you have to treat everyone the same and clearly these anti-trans healthcare laws do not. Furthermore the courts have ruled that in the Bostock v. Clayton County case and other that “sex” also means sexual orientation and gender identity. 

Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act act says, “...Section 1557 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity), in covered health programs or activities...”

But those rulings do not fit the Republican agenda so they ignore the law.

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Last Sunday I wrote about how the British Conversion Therapy ban does not include us, well it is even worst.

Boris Johnson doubles down on excluding trans people from conversion therapy ban
Pink News UK
By Reiss Smith
April 6, 2022


The prime minster said on Wednesday (6 April): “We will have a ban on gay conversion therapy, which to me is utterly abhorrent. 

“But there are complexities and sensitivities when you move from the area of sexuality to the question of gender. There, I’m afraid, there are things that I think still need to be worked out.”

He said he was “sorry we haven’t been able to reach agreement with the organisations concerned but that will in now way diminish our determination to tackle prejudice wherever we can.”

It comes after widespread backlash to his decision to separate an LGB conversion therapy ban from a trans conversion therapy ban, kicking the latter into the long grass.

Who thought up leaving us out, why it is the conservative Tory party!

Government sources have told PinkNews that equalities minister Liz Truss was “blindsided” by No. 10’s move to first cancel the conversion therapy ban, then quickly revive it without protections for trans people.

PinkNews understands that the policy change was the brainchild of Andrew Griffith, the Tory MP brought in to replace Munira Mirza as the head of the Downing Street policy unit.

The conservatives use the old debunked excuse that trans children are “suffering from some child sex abuse.”

Just like American conservatives they don’t care the harm they are doing to our children.