10 Comments
founding

I wish there were any cause for optimism but I struggle to see it. With the Kavanagh and Barrett comments it is clear where the majority of the court will go on permitting bans in entirety. Exactly what the Matt Walsh’s of the world were predicting and hoping for - get these cases to SCOTUS as quickly as possible knowing they have a biased bench. It’s beyond disgusting what has happened to the US judiciary.

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People need to see this and make the connection to how it could affect them. The issue writ large concerns individual freedom, even if viewed narrowly as parental rights. This should be the conservative position, if I'm being honest.

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If a gender affirming care ban (whether adult or minors) makes it to SCOTUS, I don’t know for sure what will happen but I suspect that GAC will fail there by a 5-4 or 6-3 margin. My hope is that no national bans get passed, which would mean that such a SCOTUS ruling hopefully would be analogous to Dobbs in leaving it up to the states - far from an ideal outcome, but at least GAC would be available somewhere in the US.

I do very much believe that the ultimate goal of most GOP politicians is to get national GAC bans passed, both kids and adult. The concept is very scary, but despite how badly they want these bans, I don’t see how they would be a slam dunk. Estrogen, for example, is used by AFAB cis women for all sorts of reasons, and if a ban ever interfered with the ability of non-trans women to get their medication, you can easily imagine the howls of protest. Similarly, many trans-related surgeries have counterparts in plastic surgical procedures that non-trans people also undergo, meaning that to make a ban practical, you’d have to heavily parse out and target trans individuals in the medical pipeline - which seems highly unconstitutional.

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So if the parties to the case are still under the injunction, then why not just have every trans kid and parent of trans kids in the state join in on the case? (unless there are only 2 who are out and receiving care which I suppose is a possibility)

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founding

Good job explaining the complexity and implications of this ruling. No other news source seems invested in helping their readers understand these things. It's always bothered me that some local federal judge under the right circumstances can have the power to put an injunction on something that may impact the entire country.

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I so appreciate Erin’s ability to explain complex legal issues. As a recovering attorney, I struggle to explain to others how convoluted these decisions are. What a time we are living in!!

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Oh, goodie, yet another cloud of impending doom for the Supreme Court to dangle over all of us! Just what I needed to get rid of that last little pesky bit of restful sleep.

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