Following a youth gender affirming care ban in the state, a judge in Kansas issued a block of the ban. The ban, which was passed early last year, is now being challenged in court by two transgender teens and their families, arguing that the ban is unconstitutional under state law.
The Judge seeing the case, State District Court Judge Carl Folsom III, entered a preliminary ruling on Friday, stating that the law banning care likely violates Kansas’ state Constitution. The judge issued a temporary injunction, blocking the law banning care until the court case is resolved.
Judge Folsom’s 117 page ruling is based on extensive testimony, provided over two days of hearings, into the facts surrounding gender-affirming medical care for minors in Kansas. The judge found that the medical experts who supported affirming care were credible due to their long years of experience treating and/or conducting research on children with gender dysphoria, while the experts offered in support of the ban were less credible, prone to cherry-picking evidence and making judgements on their personal views rather than medical science.
The ruling has a familiar tone for a gender-affirming care ban case decided in favor of trans youth in their families. It focuses on the facts of the care provided, the qualifications of different experts, and the needs of the patients. It then concludes that gender-affirming care is well supported by medical evidence and not unusually risky, and that negative outcomes are rare. In the Kansas clinic at the heart of this case, the judge found, “99.2% of GPS patients who received gender-affirming medical care continue to identify as transgender into adulthood. Of the remaining 0.8%, most did not regret the medical treatment they received.”
In rulings where the judgement has gone against trans youth and their families, including the Supreme Court ruling in U. S. vs Skrmetti, medical evidence has been greatly downplayed in favor of giving legislators an absolute right to make laws regulating medical care, regardless of the safety and efficacy of a treatment or the harm or benefit of the law to actual patients.
The full text of Judge Folsom’s preliminary ruling, in pdf form, can be found here.
In a settlement, Texas Children’s Hospital has agreed to open the country’s first detransition clinic. The settlement comes as a conclusion to a lawsuit brought against the hospital by the Trump regime and Texas AG Ken Paxton, who alleged that the hospital was in violation of the law by providing gender affirming care for youth.
The settlement also requires that the hospital cease providing gender affirming care for trans youth and also that they fire five physicians who had previously been involved in providing gender affirming care.
In a now deleted statement, the hospital described the lawsuit as “wrought with falsehoods and distractions,” going on to explain its decision to settle as one of existentially protecting the hospital “To be clear — we are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation.”
It is unclear how many clients this detransition clinic will end up treating, as people who voluntarily detransition are a tiny fraction of trans people, who are in turn already a tiny fraction of the population.