And So It Begins

Alabama has began another attack on us modeled after the Supreme Court, Roe v Wade ruling.

Alabama cites abortion ruling in transgender medication case
AP News
By Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City, Utah; Steve LeBlanc in Boston; and Paul Weber in Austin, Texas,
June 30, 2022


Days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can prohibit abortion, Alabama has seized on the decision to argue that the state should also be able to ban gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender youths.

The case marks one of the first known instances in which a conservative state has tried to apply the abortion ruling to other realms, just as LGBTQ advocates and others were afraid would happen.

Critics have expressed fear that the legal reasoning behind the high court ruling could lead to a rollback of decisions involving such matters as gay marriage, birth control and parental rights.

The state is asking a federal appeals court to lift an injunction and let it enforce an Alabama law that would make it a felony to give puberty blockers or hormones to transgender minors to help affirm their gender identity.

The earliest that the case could go before the Supreme Court I would guess is the 2023 -2024 court season because the case will have to wind it way through the legal bureaucracy.

Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said this is the first case he is aware of in which a state cited the abortion ruling on another issue, but added, “It won’t be the last.”

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said in the majority opinion that the abortion ruling should not cast “doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” But Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the same legal reasoning should be used to reconsider high court rulings protecting same-sex marriage, gay sex and contraceptives.

“It is no surprise that Alabama and other extremely conservative states are going to take up that invitation as forcefully as they can,” Minter said. “Justice Thomas’ concurrence was a declaration of war on groups already under attack, and we expect the hostility to be escalated.”

If gays and lesbians say that this doesn’t affect them then read Martin Niemöller poem, this is a classic case of dividing the factions. The dominoes theory toppling one at a time.