Penna Dexter

Early last year The Daily Wire investigated Vanderbilt University Medical Center and found a robust gender transition program including pressure tactics against conscientious objectors and a “Buddies Program” in which trans activists accompany patients seeking treatment to make sure nothing deters them along the path to transition. Doctors pushing for the gender program touted so-called gender affirmation surgeries as “huge money makers.”

When Tennessee House Republicans saw this evidence, they sought clarification from Vanderbilt Medical Center. The clinic paused transition surgeries on minors, pending “review” of the program.

Fast forward to the session of the Tennessee General Assembly that wrapped up last month. Legislators passed and the governor signed, SB1, which prohibits gender transition procedures from being done on minors.

House Majority Leader William Lamberth exhibited blunt southern honesty when he stated, “We’re not gonna have any kind of quack doctor coming to this state and start doing double mastectomies on children that are suffering through body dysphoria.”

The U.S. Department of Justice has now sued Tennessee to block this law. The DOJ claims SB1 violates the 14^th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The complaint states that this new law “denies necessary medical care to children based solely on who they are.”

The complaint argues that, under SB1, a doctor would be allowed to prescribe testosterone for a “non-transgender male minor” for delayed puberty, but would be prohibited from issuing that same prescription for a transgender male — i.e., a biological female.

SB1 defines a person’s sex as “determined by anatomy and genetics.” The DOJ’s complaint, instead, elevates gender identity over sex “assigned” at birth. In an article describing the lawsuit, Washington Stand writer Joshua Arnold, points out that the DOJ is supposed to enforce federal law. But the language in this complaint signals what he terms “a revisionist reality at work,” which “would retroactively rewrite laws distinguishing the sexes.”

The courts must shut down this overreach.