More than a dozen Democrat attorneys general sued the Trump administration on Friday over its efforts to protect children from harmful transgender medical interventions.
New York Attorney General Letitia James led a coalition of 15 other states and Washington, D.C. in arguing the president’s January 28 executive order, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” is “unconstitutional” because no federal law prohibits transgender procedures.
The lawsuit accuses the Trump administration of “relentlessly, cruelly, and unlawfully target[ing] transgender individuals,” banishing them from the public square and “deny[ing] their very existence.”
It falsely asserts that transgender medical interventions like puberty blocking drugs, opposite sex hormones and surgeries are “medically necessary” and that minors’ “health and wellbeing … depends on their ability to live in a manner consistent with their gender identity.”
“This administration is ruthlessly targeting young people who already face immense barriers just to be seen and heard, and are putting countless lives at risk in the process,” said Attorney General James in a statement. “In New York and nationwide, we will never stop fighting for the dignity, safety, and basic rights of the transgender community.”
James was joined by the attorneys general of Massachusetts, California, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Delaware, Hawai’I, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro also joined the lawsuit, since the state’s attorney general is a Republican, as did the District of Columbia.
The attorneys general filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, where they will most likely find a judge sympathetic to their case. The court currently has 11 active district judges, all of whom were appointed by Democrat presidents.
Since January 20, the Trump administration has had singular success in protecting children from transgender procedures. The president’s executive order directed the heads of federal departments and agencies to immediately defund medical institutions, schools and hospitals that provide transgender procedures to minors.
In just a few short months since then:
- Children’s Hospital Los Angeles shut down their harmful “Center for Transyouth Health and Development,” one of the oldest and largest children’s “gender clinics” in the country. The hospital cited a “legal and financial assessment of the increasingly severe impacts of recent administrative actions and proposed policies” in their announcement closing the clinic.
- Children’s National Hospital in Washington D.C. announced it would cease providing minors with puberty blocking drugs and opposite sex hormones by August 30.
- University of Chicago Medicine announced an “immediate end to all transgender surgeries and drugs for children.”
- Children’s Hospital Colorado and Denver Health initially paused providing puberty blocking drugs and opposite sex hormones, though it resumed the interventions after a judge issued a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration.
- The FBI began investigating Boston Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Colorado and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles for mutilating the genitals of transgender-identifying children.
These developments came after the Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo in April titled “Preventing the Mutilation of American Children” in which she directed U.S. Department of Justice attorneys to investigate transgender procedures being performed on minors.
“The Department of Justice will not sit idly by while doctors, motivated by ideology, profits, or both, exploit and mutilate our children,” Bondi said. “Under my watch, the Department will act decisively to protect our children and hold accountable those who mutilate them under the guise of care.”
At least two other courts in Washington and Maryland have already issued temporary restraining orders preventing the Trump administration from enforcing its executive order protecting children. Those orders have already been appealed to the Ninth and Fourth Circuit Courts of Appeals, respectively.
Depending upon how the courts of appeals rule, the issue could ultimately end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The case is Massachusetts v. Donald J. Trump
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God’s Amazing Grace in a Transgendered Person’s Life
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FBI Investigates Three Major Hospitals for Mutilating Children
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Shuts Down Harmful ‘Center for Transyouth’
DOJ Targets Those Mutilating Children with ‘Transgender’ Drugs and Surgeries
Pam Bondi Directs DOJ Attorneys to Investigate Transgender Procedures for Minors
President Trump Signs Order Protecting Children From Transgender Medical Interventions
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