USA: Judge Strikes Down Arkansas Law Banning Gender Transition Care for Minors
USA: Judge Strikes Down Arkansas Law Banning Gender Transition Care for Minors
The case had been closely watched as an important test of whether bans on transition care for minors, enacted by more than a dozen states, could withstand challenges.
Judge James M. Moody Jr. of Federal District Court in Little Rock said the law both discriminated against transgender people and violated the constitutional rights of doctors. He also said that the state of Arkansas had failed to substantially prove a number of its claims, including that the care was experimental or carelessly prescribed to teenagers.
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Gender affirming care bans haven’t had a great time standing up in federal court in the past decade or so.
Groups like the ACLU and Lambda Legal have gone to great lengths to establish precedent that gender doesn’t have to be defined at birth, gender dysphoria is a genuine medical condition, and that gender affirming care helps with dysphoria.
That, combined with the precedent in Bostock that sexuality and gender identity can be covered by bans on sex discrimination makes it look like these bans will continue to fail when challenged.
Granted, the Federalist Society ghouls and their friends know this too and are trying to push back. Also, the Supreme Court could rule on 303 Creative v. Elenis tomorrow and absolutely devastate LGBT protections in the name of religious freedom. That would make this comment irrelevant almost immediately. As for now, we’ll probably see a lot more bans fail in federal court though
People need to shift their perspective a bit to understand why conservatives keep fighting an obviously stupid war. It isn't about the specific group they're trying to demonize. It's about having something to fight, period. They lost on gay marriage - if they actually thought it was so terrible, they would still be fighting it. The same is true for Trans exclusionary laws. Anyone can do the math and realize that the societal harm caused if you assume even their wildest claims are true is dwarfed by the political money required to fight for and against these laws. And money, of course, is the root of the problem.
As long as they have an unlimited number of people to punch down at, they can keep riling up their bases. That means they have job security, and they can exploit these positions for "legal" bribes through cushy retirement jobs and conduct their real (economic) war on behalf of the rich.
The Economic Policy Institute in the US published a study at the beginning of 2023. They analysed a lot of data (highly recommended read) and concluded:
Abortion access, and the long-term consequences of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, are crucial economic issues. From labor market outcomes to financial security and earnings, and crucially, the fundamental right to bodily autonomy, abortion access is critical for women to be able to decide their own economic trajectories. [...]
Abortion bans as an economic policy have not appeared in a vacuum, or even as a narrowly tailored religious concern, since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1972. Rather, denial of abortion access is one additional policy that states have engineered over decades in a sustained project of economic subjugation, control, and worker disempowerment. States that have banned and restricted abortion have largely also kept minimum wages low, underfunded and complicated their unemployment insurance systems, declined to expand Medicaid, suppressed unionization, and preferred to over-incarcerate. These policies, in conjunction, keep working people economically disempowered.
Source: The economics of abortion bans