Federal Judge Finds Anti-Trans Propaganda is Meritless
In Arkansas, the anti-trans side lost on facts. THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN SAYING!
by Evan Urquhart
The anti-trans side relies on religious doctrine, prejudice, obfuscation, and pseudoscience to confuse and distort the issue of gender affirming healthcare. But you don’t have to take the word of this reporter! A federal court heard both sides during a trial where trans youth, their parents, and their doctors challenged a law banning gender affirming care in Arkansas. The court found that the law violated the right to due process and to equal treatment under the constitution, and ordered the law struck down because Arkansas failed to demonstrate a compelling state interest justifying the unequal treatment. (The judge also found that the law barring doctors from referring patients to gender affirming care providers violated those doctors’ free speech rights.)
The decision itself is the most important thing, but what really stood out was the finding of facts in the opinion. Time and again the judge found exactly what trans people, and this website, have been saying: The “experts” on the anti-trans side are not experts. The evidence in favor of gender affirming care is similar to evidence for other treatments. The risks of gender-affirming medical treatments are similar to risks of many other treatments for adolescents. The benefits are as well supported as the benefits of many other treatments. The existence of some people who experience regret and detransition does not change this. The objections to gender-affirming care are based on ideology, not science.
The full opinion is 80 pages, but it is a satisfying read. Over and over again plain facts are stated in plain language. Here are a couple of the fact findings from the beginning of the opinion:
screenshot from the pdf of 4:21CV00450 JM
And here are some of the facts from roughly the middle point:
screenshot from the pdf of 4:21CV00450 JM
Pretty good stuff, right? Here’s a bit from near the end, on the state’s “expert” witnesses:
screenshot from the pdf of 4:21CV00450 JM
There is a whole lot more to come on gender-affirming care bans, and no reason to think that the trans community is out of the woods after one good opinion. Still, reading these facts in black and white, by a judge who heard the testimony on both sides and was completely unpersuaded by what the anti-trans side put up against the mainstream medical establishment is a strong start. The struggle for transgender rights is about dignity and diversity and human flourishing, but it’s also about medicine. It’s about a medical treatment that has been proven to succeed by any normal metric, but is being attacked and maligned because the group of people who need it make some folks uncomfortable. If there are such a thing as individual constitutional rights in America, this is the case for them. The prejudice of religiously motivated bigots should not and cannot be allowed to decide which types of medical treatment are necessary, or effective.