The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing Idaho’s ban on transgender procedures on youth amid ongoing legal battles, overturning decisions made by lower courts.
The justices’ order Monday allows the state to enforce a 2023 law that imposes severe penalties on physicians, including up to 10 years behind bars, for administering hormones, puberty blockers, or other gender-affirming treatments on children under 18 years old.
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Justice Neil Gorsuch of the conservative majority wrote that it is “a welcome development” that the court is reining in an overly broad lower court order.
A federal judge in Idaho had blocked the law in its entirety after determining that it was necessary to do so to protect the teens, who are identified under pseudonyms in court papers.
Lawyers for the teens wrote in court papers that the teens’ “gender dysphoria has been dramatically alleviated as a result of puberty blockers and estrogen therapy.”
Opponents of the law have said it will likely increase suicide rates among teens. The law’s backers have said it is necessary to “protect children” from medical or surgical treatments for gender dysphoria, though there’s little indication that gender-affirming surgeries are being performed on transgender youth in Idaho.
Supporters of the law are wrong. Last year, a study out of Finland found that gender dysphoria is in fact a symptom of mental illness, that gender transitioning procedures don’t provide any relief for an individual’s psychological needs, and that transitioning someone with gender dysphoria doesn’t even lower their risk of suicide. A separate study out of the Netherlands also concluded that most children with gender dysphoria naturally grow out of their confusion after puberty.
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Several states have enacted laws to protect children from these barbaric procedures: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.
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Last week, the UK’s National Health Services released a comprehensive 388-page report authored by the president of the Royal College of Pediatrics, Hilary Cass. It is the most exhaustive and systematic examination of the medical evidence regarding gender transitions, and it utterly destroys the rationale behind transgender procedures for gender-confused children. It concluded that they are rooted in ideology, not scientific evidence.
“Ideology on all sides has directed care, rather than care being directed by normal principles of pediatrics and mental health,” Cass wrote.
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador found support from Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett in his appeal to overturn a comprehensive injunction on the state’s law which had halted the law’s implementation.
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“Ordinarily, injunctions like these may go no further than necessary to provide interim relief to the parties,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his concurring opinion. “In this case, however, the district court went much further, prohibiting a State from enforcing any aspect of its duly enacted law against anyone.”
Naturally, the leftist wing of the court took the side of genital mutilation.