Several Arkansas families and doctors are suing Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and members of the state’s medical board over a recently passed law that bans health care specialists from providing transition-related care to transgender children.
The law, which was passed in April after the state legislature voted to override a veto by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, is the first law in the nation to ban trans health care for youth in this way.
Two physicians who provide transition-related care to children, as well as four transgender youth and their parents, are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in their suit against Rutledge and the medical board members. Rutledge, in an email to NBC News, said she would “aggressively defend Arkansas’s law.”
Holly Dickson, executive director for the ACLU of Arkansas, said in a statement that the law “would be devastating to trans youth and their families” and would cause many families in the state to have to choose between living there or moving to a different area of the U.S. where better health options for their children were available.
“We’re suing to stop this cruel and unconstitutional law from taking effect and inflicting further harm on these children and their families,” Dickson added.
Amanda Dennis, a mother of a 9-year-old transgender girl who is negatively impacted by the law, explained why she and her family were part of the lawsuit.
“Our child has known exactly who she is since she was 2 years old. She was a happy child and felt comfortable expressing herself but when she began to feel pressure at school to pretend she is a boy, she began to really struggle,” Dennis said. “Last year, when she told us she is a girl and would like to be called ‘Brooke’ and referred to using she and her pronouns, we supported her immediately and the cloud of sadness lifted and her smile came back.”
“We have told all of our children that we will always protect them,” Dennis added, “but this law stands in the way of our child getting the medical care she will desperately need.”
The lawsuit alleges that transgender children “will be unable to obtain medical care that their doctors and parents agree they need — and those already receiving care will have their treatment abruptly halted — which could have serious and potentially life-threatening consequences.”
In the legal brief filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, the ACLU noted weeks after the legislation was passed into law, at least six transgender adolescents in the state attempted suicide.
The new law “violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it discriminates on the basis of sex and transgender status by prohibiting certain medical treatments only for transgender patients and only when the care is ‘related to gender transition,'” the lawsuit goes on to say. “This discrimination cannot be justified under heightened scrutiny or any level of equal protection scrutiny.”
In addition to the Equal Protection clause, the ACLU further states that the law violates the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, limiting the rights of parents to seek health care options for their children, as well as the First Amendment speech rights of health care providers, who cannot refer parents to treatment options “in accordance with the accepted medical standards of care.”
Many health care organizations have rallied in support of trans adolescents’ and children’s right to access transition-related care, with many voicing strong opposition to a number of laws across the country that would enact similar restrictions that the Arkansas law seeks to do.
“Politics has no place here. These are individual conversations between clinicians, patients and families about what’s best,” said American Academy of Pediatrics CEO and Executive Vice President Mark Del Monte in a statement in March.
So far in 2021, hundreds of bills sponsored by Republican lawmakers in dozens of state legislatures across the country seek to severely curtail transgender children’s rights to receive adequate care, while other proposed bills aim to limit trans children’s ability to play in school sports. As of May 7, 17 such bills have been signed into law — more anti-LGBTQ legislation than was enacted in the previous three years combined.
And the bills keep coming. On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers in two more states held legislative hearings on multiple anti-trans proposals.. “Anti-trans bills still alive in Wisconsin and Louisiana with hearings TODAY,” noted transgender rights activist Chase Strangio on Twitter.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.