The Biden administration is challenging a Tennessee law that effective July 1 protects minors from body-altering gender transition surgeries and the use of harmful puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is intervening in a lawsuit filed April 20 by the radical left-wing American Civil Liberties Union and pro-trans activist group Lamba seeking a permanent injunction against Tennessee’s new law called SB 1.
In its 19-page complaint, the DOJ is contending that SB 1 violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by denying “necessary medical care to children based solely on who they are.”
Instead of interpreting the law or citing judicial precedent in their complaint, the DOJ blatantly quotes transgender ideology dogma accordingly: “Gender identity refers to a person’s core sense of belonging to a particular gender, such as male or female. Every person has a gender identity.”
The complaint, which contends seven times the notion that sex is “assigned” at birth states further: “Transgender people are people whose gender identity does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth.”
Conversely, SB 1 defines sex as “a person’s immutable characteristics of the reproductive system that define the individual as male or female, as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.”
David Fowler, president of the Family Action Council of Tennessee, told The Washington Stand: “The Department of Justice, under the guise of ‘equal protection,’ would have the court reconfigure the understanding of persons under the Constitution from being what they were at common law—male or female human beings—to a new understanding of humanity that divides human beings based on who is transgendered and who is not. This effectively means transgender ideology now defines what it means to be human and a person.”
The DOJ’s challenge to Tennessee’s law aimed at protecting minors from genital mutilation and irreversible sterilization isn’t the Biden administration’s first attempt to promote transgender ideology over scientific facts and proven healing medical practices.
In April 2022, the DOJ intervened in another ACLU lawsuit against Alabama’s Vulnerable Child and Adolescent Protection (VCAP) Act, which also protects children from gender transition procedures. Implementation of Alabama’s law has been stalled while the lawsuit against it continues.
Meanwhile, increasingly, states are passing laws protecting minors from radical gender transition treatments. Last week, Montana and Oklahoma joined 13 other states that have passed similar legislation that gives minors some level of protection from gender transition procedures in the last two years. They are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.
Federal courts have blocked the Arkansas and Alabama laws from being enforced.
Photo: Yuri Gripas / AP Images