Republican lawmakers on Sunday successfully stripped a $35 price cap on the cost of insulin for many patients from the ambitious legislative package Democrats are moving through Congress this weekend, invoking arcane Senate rules to jettison the measure.
The insulin cap is a long-running ambition of Democrats, who want it to apply to patients on Medicare and private insurance.
Republicans left the portion that applies to Medicare patients untouched but stripped the insulin cap for other patients. Bipartisan talks on a broader insulin pricing bill faltered earlier this year.
Republicans singled out the insulin price cap—a vital, life-saving measure for which there is no rational objection—and blocked its inclusion in the bill, expressly to “deny Democrats a victory” at a cost of American lives. The ultimate expression of politics over all else.
There will be little reason for Dem voters to vote for Dems if the message of who did this to them is never mentioned on any campaign trail. And as we’re all painfully aware, Dems do not message or frame anything of value when they’re on the campaign trail.
Religious preference takes priority over a woman’s health. In his mind the woman had sex so should be forced to have a pregnancy followed by a forced birth. How dare she enjoy a sexual encounter and have it for anything other than procreation. He is a pharmacist and should not have the job if he cannot dispense medication ordered by a doctor. He is not a doctor. He is not the woman’s medical provider. If he doesn’t want to do the job, then get a different job. Here is a case of demanding special rights due to religion. Remember when the right used to say the gays wanted special rights when we demanded to be treated equally, well religion is now demanding special rights and they are getting it. Hugs
An emergency contraception pill is seen through packaging in this stock photo.
Andrea Anderson of McGregor Minn., sought to fill her prescription for Ella, which is used to stop a pregnancy before it starts, after a condom broke during intercourse.
She had the prescription sent to a nearby Thrifty White pharmacy, but when she called to confirm, pharmacist George Badeaux told her he would not fill it due to “personal reasons.”
According to the lawsuit, he said a colleague might be willing to fill it, but with a snowstorm imminent that person may not make it into work. Anderson got the prescription filled in Brainerd, but it required a 100-mile drive round trip in a snowstorm that allegedly took Anderson more than three hours.
In his deposition, Badeaux said it was not the first time he’d declined to provide emergency contraceptives.
According to the suit, the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy allows pharmacists to decline to fill a prescription for emergency contraceptives if it conflicts with their beliefs. However, they must make other arrangements for the patient to get their medication.
Anderson said in a deposition that the experience made her feel “embarrassment and shame.”
Leaders with the group Gender Justice, which represented Anderson in this case, said they plan to appeal.
“The testimony was so clear that she received lesser services than other customers because what she was going there for was emergency contraception. And so we believe that, by law, that’s discrimination in Minnesota,” said Jess Braverman, legal director for Gender Justice.
Braverman noted that the jury did award Anderson $25,000 for emotional harm caused by the experience, although the pharmacist will not have to pay her that money unless the no-discrimination finding is changed in future motions or on appeal.
Charles Shreffler, Badeaux’s attorney, confirmed that. “In order for [Badeaux] to be liable for damages, he has to be found liable. The jury has to first find that he discriminated against Ms. Anderson on the basis of her sex, and the jury specifically found that he did not discriminate against her.”
“We are incredibly happy with the decision,” he added. “Medical professionals should be free to practice their profession in line with their beliefs.”
“He the White House doctor. He was a great doctor. You know, he was an admiral, a doctor, and now he’s a congressman. I asked him, ‘Which is the best if you had your choice?’ And he sort of indicated doctor, because he loved looking at my body. It was so strong and powerful.
“But he said I’m the healthiest president that’s ever lived. I was the healthiest. I said ‘I like this guy. I don’t know who the hell he is’ at the time, I said, but I liked him.” – Donald Trump, speaking about Rep. Ronny Jackson during last night’s CPAC speech.
I’m betting either Kennedy (before being murdered, trolls), Obama or Carter were the healthiest presidents in office who ever lived. Maybe Eisenhower, who was just out of the military when elected.
Trump is obese, demented and sadly from a family that is apparently mostly long lived. I hope all the stress of losing the election in 2020 had an effect on him. Stress is a risk factor for many illnesses.
The little girl, Alaa Qadooum, and her father were on a motorcycle passing the Palestine Towers building, on their way to buy some groceries. He was also killed, leaving his wife Rasha and three other children without a breadwinner.
Israel has imposed an economic and military siege on the Gaza Strip since 2007, limiting the densely populated region’s imports and interfering with the building and repair of infrastructure. Under international law, Israel is the Occupying power in Gaza, which it seized by main force in 1967, and may not treat Gaza’s inhabitants in a brutalizing way, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Rome Statute of 2002 that underpins the International Criminal Court.
The strike on a civilian apartment building in a densely packed city was not reported on any of the US cable news channels I checked in on today. But were a retaliatory strike by some Gaza-based Palestinian group to manage to hit something in Israel, now that would be a news segment. It is one of the propaganda effects of US television news that correspondents very seldom are allowed to report on Israeli aggressive actions, so the reaction of Palestinians always comes out of the blue and looks like unprovoked barbarism.
Contrast the American reaction (yawn) to this Israeli bombing of the Palestine Towers apartment building, where civilians lived, with the outrage in this country when Russia behaves similarly in Ukraine.
[Russian] “Attacks have struck people in bread lines and on playgrounds, as well as apartment blocks, theaters and hospitals. After each one, Russia has denied or deflected responsibility, often accusing Ukraine of attacking its own people to sway domestic and global opinion against Moscow. Russia has claimed that it aims only at targets of military value — even though some were hundreds of miles from the front lines — and that whenever a civilian facility did get hit, it was one that the Ukrainian military had co-opted for use as a command post, a shelter for foreign fighters or storage for weapons.”
So Russia sounds exactly like Israel. They had to hit the apartment building because terrorists were hiding out in it, even (gasp) members of the feared 800-strong Azov Brigade.
The authors refuse to let Russia off the hook, going through one by one and examining the bombing of apartment buildings, and questioning the Russian rationale.
No paper of record in the US treats the Israelis the way the NYT treated Russia in this article, even when Israeli leaders order army snipers to shoot Palestinian civilians in Gaza for demonstrating, unarmed, near an Israeli security fence. They killed 266 protesters or medics and journalists over two years of weekly demonstrations, and wounded an unimaginable 30,000, many of them doomed to lose a leg.
Of course Israel has a right to defend itself from attack, as does everyone, though it is dreary that the US State Department stops once it has said that. But it doesn’t have the right to use force recklessly in disregard of innocent civilian life.
The Israeli propaganda machine, like that of the US far right, is very good at depicting them as beleaguered victims. Of the thousands of rockets from Gaza you’ve heard about, almost all land uselessly in the desert, though occasionally they do property damage and very occasionally hurt someone. The latter is extremely regrettable and condemnable, of course. Since the rockets have no guidance systems and are fired at civilian Israeli areas, their use is a war crime,
Proportionality matters, however, in the laws of war. Newsweek reports that “38 Israeli civilians have been killed between 2000 and 2020 by Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza.”
From 2008 until May of this year, Israel killed 5,298 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the UN. B’Tselem says that from 2000 until 2007, the Israelis killed 2,997 people in Gaza.
So that is 8,295 killed by Israel to 38 civilians killed by rockets from Gaza. Admittedly, some of the 8,295 Palestinians killed in Gaza since 2000 were combatants, whose killing might be lawful. In 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, the UN said that Israel killed 2,104 Palestinians including 1,462 civilians, of whom 495 were children and 253 women. After that 2014 assault on Gaza, Israeli authorities boasted that they had killed “1,000 terrorists.” Well, they actually killed 642 combatants and the rest of the over 2,000 dead were civilians, fully one-third of them children.
That is roughly a 70% civilian death toll. If we extrapolate that out to the total number of Palestinians killed in Gaza over the past 22 years, that would yield 5,806 civilian deaths.
38 killed Israeli civilians. 5,806 killed Palestinian civilians. In two decades.
Each Israeli is worth 152 Palestinians.
And that is about the right ratio for US television news reporting on the Palestinians, who seem to be about 152 times more invisible than the Israelis. It is also just about the ratio of outrage at the squandering of innocent life.
Members of the state medical board have agreed to initiate rules that could ban physicians from providing gender-affirming care to transgender people under the age of 18, while also limiting access to care to adults.
The vote by the Board of Medicine on Friday means the Board will begin a several month process that Chairman and Winter Park physician David Diamond said would include public meetings across the state.
Board of Medicine Vice Chairman and Fort Lauderdale physician Kevin Cairns was the only Board member to oppose the rulemaking, which was sought by Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo last appeared on JMG earlier this week when he cast doubts on the efficacy of the monkeypox vaccine.
Ladapo, who has refused to disclose his own COVID vaccination status, is affiliated with the far-right anti-vax group, America’s Frontline Doctors.
Early this year the Florida Senate approved him as state surgeon general despite reports that he lied about having treated COVID patients while working at UCLA’s hospital.
During his confirmation hearing, he repeatedly refused to say if he believes that COVID vaccines are effective.
“I think this whole thing is dehumanizing to trans people.” One of the many transgender activists speaking to the Florida Board of Medicine today before they voted to initiate the rule-making process to consider restricting gender-affirming care. #transpic.twitter.com/xjNo3EN6nG
Still thinking about how @PatrickHunterMD , a pediatrician and sitting member of the Florida Board of Medicine, called transgender people a “social contagion” today.
Which came after their “expert witness” claimed that COVID isolation made young people transgender. 🙃
DeSantis replaced an elected Dem DA with an unelected GOP prosecutor because of his and his party’s culture wars on abortion and LGBTQ people https://t.co/qYyuPL4CcI
There’s also this shit. LGBT folks in Tampa now have a Federalist Society bigot as the top DA for their area. I wonder how she’ll be in interacting with LGBT folks?
I think it’s time for CA, OR, WA, HI, NY, NJ, VT, MA, CT, MD, etc. to officially declare Florida to be a “shithole country” (especially the parts immediately around Merde-A-Lardo and wherever Ron DuhSantis is at the moment) and require visas and vaccinations to travel to/from there.
This mofo DeathSentence won election by just four-tenths of one percent — just by 33,000 votes. And he governs as if he had an overwhelming popular mandate to drag Florida back into the Middle Ages.
This is one of the big differences between RepubliQans and Democrats.
Yes, and it’s a relevant one. Another big difference – they fall in line and goosestep down to vote. We have to fall in love before we even think about maybe showing up at the polls. If there’s nothing better streaming.
We have a bunch of fake Christians and far-right fascist idealogues promoting the end of personal freedom and the beginning of a theocracy for Florida. Hold onto your hats–it’s going to get very ugly there.
The man when asked by the woman how to explain to her young children how she was forced to deliver a stillborn child and his reply was no one is guaranteed another tomorrow and he told her to return to her faith. This is the Republicans telling you who they are. Hugs
In a recent comment Tildeb championed an interim report of an inquiry on the best way to serve the needs of trans children in the UK. Almost everything I read said the report only got one thing correct in that much more needed to be done to open more treatment facilities for trans people and that the national health system needed to do more. Then because it seems the thing the report wanted to push was anti-trans propaganda the report tried to say the best treatment would be to deny that kids are trans and would grow out of it and should be treated with affirmative therapy which is another way of saying conversion therapy. Affirmative therapy is saying kids should be treated and forced to see that they are in the right body to match their gender and to accept that is who / what they are. Forget that trans nonsense, just like being gay is a fad, it is just rebelling against your parents and kids will grow out of it. All kids experiment and then they grow up, no one is gay because god did not make mistakes. It is all the same thing of denying it and forcing kids to never admit it. It is something most of the modern world has grown beyond and only the traditionalists refusing to admit times have changed in a way they dislike still cling to. For those wanting to know how bias and slanted the report was here is a breakdown of it. Hugs
This morning people who care about trans kids were reacting in utter dismay to hearing the Secretary of State for Health use the Cass interim review to justify the need to exclude trans people from a ban on conversion therapy.
I’ll link the lovely Olly Alexander linking to a clip of our Health Secretary using Cass to call for conversion therapy for trans kids – see here
Despite evidence that conversion therapy on trans children is particularly harmful, with research showing “For transgender adults who recalled gender identity conversion efforts before age 10 years, exposure was significantly associated with an increase in the lifetime odds of suicide attempts”.
For days now, MPs and commentators have cited the Cass review, in justification of the need for conversion therapy specifically for trans kids.
Of course they do not say conversion therapy for trans kids. They talk of ‘children suffering from gender confusion or gender distress’, they talk of ‘exploratory therapy. They talk of ‘unintended consequences, by which some clearly mean, they fear the law would stop them conducting conversion therapy on trans kids.
Those who want to conduct conversion therapy on trans kids hide behind a new favourite term of ‘exploratory therapy’. It is a friendly sounding rebrand of conversion therapy. It is focused on probing, delaying, questioning and at its heart, problematising trans identities. There is nothing wrong with being trans. Some kids are trans – get over it.
The same people who actually want conversion therapy for trans kids, are trying to create confusion on the meaning of affirmative therapy. They are trying to paint affirmation as a bad thing, as something forced. They are wrong and they know it. Affirmation is about meeting a person where they are, about listening to what they need. It has space for as much talk therapy on identity as a person wants. Without coercion. Without compulsion. Without considering trans or cis as a bad outcome.
Parents of trans kids are today VERY upset. People had put their faith in Cass to help our kids.
Personally, I feel something else other than upset. I feel cross at myself for not speaking up earlier.
Back when the Cass review was first announced, I had serious concerns. Concerns that have continued to mount.
There was Cass’ personal twitter following of a load of highly transphobic groups & no trans people.
There was the Cass review’s initial refusal to even say the word trans kids, in a review aimed primarily at helping trans kids.
There was the lack of any trans people on the Cass team, and the fact that the Cass team explicitly asked for people with no knowledge or experience of trans-ness, as though that was a preferable.
The fact there was no oversight group consisting of respected trans health experts and trans community leaders.
Back at the start I felt deep in my gut that this would go badly and would not serve the needs of trans kids. I seriously considered trying to get parents of trans kids together to stage a boycott until there was some proper trans representation. I didn’t for four major reasons. For one, the biggest reason, I was so tired & out of time and energy. For two, I wanted to give optimism a go – just cos everything else always fails trans kids in the UK, why couldn’t this be different – here we had a paediatrician reviewing trans kids healthcare, something I’d been asking for for years, maybe this time would be different. For three, I hoped having formal peer reviewed publications to feed into the process would make a difference (spoiler – it didn’t – the Cass team had my peer reviewed research article on the UK service from the highly respected international journal International Trans Health and didn’t even bother citing it). For four, I didn’t think things could really get much worse for trans kids in the UK, so I didn’t see how much real harm it could do.
Obviously I was very wrong. I noted my initial reaction to the pathologisation embedded in the Cass report.
The Cass interim report is now being cited everywhere to justify the need for conversion therapy for trans kids. It is being cited to deny inclusion of trans people of any age from a ban on conversion therapy.
The red flags about the Cass process meanwhile continue to grow.
I’ve been interviewed, found Cass on the face of it an empathetic listener who keeps her cards close to her chest.
Other parents of trans kids have been interviewed, again felt Cass had listened with kindness.
Many are deeply upset about the Cass interim report and the way it has encouraged further bigotry.
The Cass interim report couldn’t even take a decision on whether being trans is pathological. It couldn’t even take a decision on whether trans kids are better off being loved and supported or put through conversion torture. It is not acceptable.
I won’t dig into the details of the Cass report itself, but the references and evidence base are deeply biased and flawed. It is yet another total failure for trans kids in the UK.
There are still no trans experts involved in a senior role in the Cass review. There is no trans power at all.
The Cass process seem to think the exclusion of trans people is acceptable, because they have told themselves they are not dealing with trans people at all. They have told themselves they are dealing with healthcare for ‘children suffering from gender distress’. This phrasing has become standard.
Worryingly there are also trans-antagonistic people involved in the research for Cass.
This week, the world respected paediatrician with over a decade of practical hands on experience HELPING trans kids in Australia published a response to the Cass review in the British Medical Journal. That response is not open access to the public, but this is of incredible important to those who are directly affected (and now even threatened) by the Cass outputs, so I will put its text here:
Gender identity services for children and young people in England
Landmark review should interrogate existing international evidence and consensus
Ken C Pang, 1, 3 Jeremy Wiggins, 2 Michelle M Telfer1, 3
1 Royal Children’s Hospital; 2 Transcend Australia; 3 Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
The long awaited interim report of the Cass review was finally published in March this year.1 Commissioned in September 2020, the independent review led by paediatrician Hillary Cass examined NHS gender identity services for children and young people in England. These services are currently provided by a single specialist clinic known as the Gender Identity Development Service. After consulting people with gender diversity, health professionals, and support and advocacy groups, Cass expressed various concerns within her interim report, such as increasingly long waiting lists, the “unsustainable workload” being carried by the service, and the “considerable risk” this presented to children and young people.
Recognising that “one service is not going to be able to respond to the growing demand in a timely way,” Cass used her interim report to recommend creation of a “fundamentally different service model.” Under this model, the care of gender diverse children and young people becomes “everyone’s business” by expanding the number of providers to create a series of regional centres that have strong links to local services and a remit to provide training for clinicians at all levels.1 Although it remains to be seen how and when this key recommendation will be implemented, the proposal will be largely welcomed by gender diverse children and adolescents and their families in England. The shift away from centralised, tertiary, and quaternary centres is already occurring internationally, including in Australia,2 where local services are being enhanced to meet growing demand and provide more equitable and timely care.
Hormonal treatment In what was likely a disappointment to many, the interim report did not provide definitive advice on the use of puberty blockers and feminising or masculinising hormones. Instead, Cass advised that recommendations will be developed as the review’s research programme progresses. In particular, the report expresses the need for more long term data to assuage safety concerns regarding these hormonal interventions. Although additional data in this area are undoubtedly needed, the decision to delay recommendations pending more information on potential unknown side effects is problematic for several reasons.
Firstly, it ignores more than two decades of clinical experience in this area as well as existing evidence showing the benefits of these hormonal interventions on the mental health and quality of life of gender diverse young people.3 -9 Secondly, it will take many years to obtain these long term data. Finally, Cass acknowledges that when there is no realistic prospect of filling evidence gaps in a timely way, professional consensus should be developed on the correct way to proceed.” Such consensus already exists outside the UK. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, and the World rofessional Association for Transgender Health have all endorsed the use of these hormonal treatments in gender diverse young people,10 -12 but curiously these consensus based clinical guidelines and position statements receive little or no mention in the interim report.
Indeed, there is no evidence, as yet, that the Cass review has consulted beyond the UK. This inward looking focus may be a reflection of how England’s gender identity service has come to chart its own path in this field. For example, its current use of puberty blockers diverges considerably from international best practice. In particular, NHS England mandates that any gender diverse person under the age of 18 years who wishes to access oestrogen or testosterone must first receive at least 12 months of puberty suppression.13 However, many young people in this situation will already be in late puberty or have finished their pubertal development, by which time the main potential benefits of puberty suppression have been lost.11 Moreover, using puberty blockers in such individuals is more likely to induce unwanted menopausal symptoms such as fatigue and disturbed mood.14 For these reasons, puberty suppression outside the UK is typically reserved for gender diverse young people who are in early or middle puberty, when there is a physiological reason for prescribing blockers.
Another possible reason exists for the Cass review appearing to have neglected international consensus around hormone prescribing. While the interim report often mentions the need to “build consensus,” Cass seems keen to find a way forward that ensures “conceptual agreement” and “shared understanding” across all interested parties, including those who view gender diversity as inherently pathological. Compromise can be productive in many situations, but the assumption that the middle ground serves the best interests of gender diverse children and young people is a fallacy. Where polarised opinions exist in medicine—as is true in this case—it can be harmful to give equal credence to all viewpoints, particularly the more extreme or outlying views on either side. Hopefully Cass will keep this in mind when preparing her final report.
(Back to me typing) The authors of the above include some of the most respected paediatricians with decade long expertise in working with trans kids in Australia. The Cass team should have been queuing up to learn from Australian experts. The fact they have totally ignored expertise from outside of the UK and its partner system in the Netherlands, strikes as amazing arrogance. The fact the Australian experts felt the need to write a submission to the BMJ to raise their concerns with the Cass report is again astonishing, and in another less transphobic country would set off alarm bells.
I don’t know where we go from here.
I do know the cards are now on the table. I have zero faith in the Cass process. It has already done more harm than good.
My number one hope for Cass was it would take significant strides in depathologising approaches to trans kids. It has done the exact opposite. 18 months in and they won’t even say the word trans.
I had hoped Cass would educate the public that being trans is not a problem or a pathology. It has done the opposite, and legitimised some incredibly problematising media pieces this week alone.
I had hoped it would move us from psychoanalysis to modern healthcare – instead people are using Cass to justify the need for exploratory therapy, conversion therapy by a different name.
I had hoped it would move trans kids’ healthcare away from a monopoly mental health trust to modern secondary or primary care. Instead, the focus appears to be on talk therapy to problematise trans-ness, without tackling the hostile climate that makes life so hard for trans kids, and perhaps with even less route to medical intervention where needed.
Cass has done nothing to highlight the biggest problem for many trans kids. The climate of societal transphobia. Just this week we have had headlines stating trans people can be humiliated and segregated as the UK tries to bring in a bathroom bill by the back door. Trans kids and adolescents have been in crisis again this week, many are really struggling with mental health. Not because there’s something inherently wrong with being trans, but because the UK is a hostile terrifying place to be trans as our rights are continually debated or taken away. Cass has done absolutely nothing to highlight the crisis in mental health caused by the terrible way our country treats trans people.
Cass has failed us on every level.
The whole process is cis-supremacism in full dominance.
Why do a bunch of cis people continue to debate and dictate whether or not trans kids should be put under conversion therapy.
Why do cis people continue to have all the power, and continue to use it to harm trans kids.
Trans liberation now. Trans kids deserve so much better than this.
I want to point out a few things to those who are thinking that women / girls shouldn’t have “people with penises” in their locker room or bathrooms. Let’s take bathrooms first. I bet in the 1960’s there was a lot of talk that white women did not want black women in their bathrooms. All the black women wanted to do was use the facilities not have a social meeting, same as trans people now. They just want to use the facilities. We learned back in this time that separate was not equal. As to locker rooms the same argument applies, but not so much. I don’t know how modern locker rooms are set up, but they can be reasonably private. Showers can be smaller single occupancy showers. But that overlooks the fear and terror installed in people, kids and adults, of the human body. I told how one kid at the SDA church boarding school I went to was so scared of the “private area” that he would only shower when very few people were around and only with his underwear on. That kind of teaching about body parts is harmful and stupid. In European countries there is not a hang up or fear of the human body, kids are taught at an early age what is what, where it is, and how to be respectful of it. The responsibility is not all with the girls either, teen boys are taught how to respectfully hide or manage an embarrassing erection. But to locker rooms, what are you people doing in there, having a measuring contest of sex organs? You seem to forget the gay and lesbian kids in the room, do you think they are getting their thrills by being there. No way. A couple of boys used to clown around to hide their nervousness but really the truth was back in those days most of us hurried to change our clothes and get ourselves covered. I think we were all afraid we did not measure up to what we though men were supposed to be done there. I think that what is bothering the parents is other than the super religious families, the young people / minors are no longer embarrassed and ashamed over the body. They have been taught acceptance and no body shaming. That is why the red states are desperate to change acceptance in schools, to implement the now say gay and anti-trans bills. They want the kids to be ashamed and fearful over the human body. They don’t want sex education because they want the kids clueless and ignorant about body rights of who can touch them and how NOT to get a pregnancy they now cannot abort. Kids can be taught to use the bathrooms / locker rooms without having orgies. Look, in my day teachers had to break up the occasional fight, I am sure teachers can stop any kids from outright display of their genitals. Think of this in the hospital we used curtains on a track in the ceiling for privacy. They can be off the ground so teachers can make sure kids are not in there playing with each other. Easy single person solutions for adults and kids, if privacy means that much to you pull the curtain. This is about making trans people scary and the enemy. They are not. They are not there to attack others. With kids they are either required to have PE class or they simply want to play a sport. This is about saying anyone with a penis cannot control themselves. Hugs
The complaint filed Thursday by the Human Rights Campaign asserts that a state law preventing transgender students from accessing school facilities consistent with their gender identity violates their constitutional rights.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) on Thursday filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging a 2021 Tennessee law that prohibits transgender students from using school restrooms or locker rooms that match their gender identity.
A similar complaint was filed by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the educational arm of the HRC, last year. That lawsuit was dropped in February after the plaintiffs and their families decided to move out of Tennessee.
Thursday’s complaint was filed on behalf of D.H., a transgender 8-year-old girl entering the third grade in Williamson County, Tenn.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ rights groups, is suing the Tennessee Department of Education and its commissioner over the enforcement of a state law barring transgender students from using school facilities like restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court alleges that the law, signed by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) last May, singles out transgender students for “disfavored treatment” and violates rights guaranteed to them under the U.S. Constitution and Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs. The U.S. Department of Education last year said the policy protects students from discrimination based on their gender identity.
The law, officially titled the Tennessee Accommodations for All Children Act, requires state public schools to provide “reasonable accommodation” for students who “will not or cannot” use a gender-specific facility.
Under the measure, a “reasonable accommodation” does not include access to a restroom or changing room that is “designated for use by members of the opposite sex while persons of the opposite sex are present or could be present.” In this case, “sex” is defined as a student’s sex assigned at birth, which the law argues is immutable.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the educational arm of the HRC, filed a similar lawsuit against the Tennessee law last year, but that case was dismissed in February after both plaintiffs and their families decided to move to another state.
Thursday’s complaint was filed jointly with the law firm Linklaters on behalf of a transgender 8-year-old girl entering the third grade in Williamson County, Tenn. Jason Golden, the director of Williamson County Schools, and the Williamson County Board of Education are also named as defendants in the complaint.
According to the lawsuit, the girl, identified pseudonymously as D.H. to protect her identity, had previously been permitted to use the girls’ restroom at school for in-person events while engaging in distance learning in 2021.
Once D.H. returned to the classroom earlier this year, she was barred under the Accommodations for All Children Act from using facilities aligning with her gender identity and made to use a single-occupancy restroom which reportedly has on more than one occasion been covered in human waste.
“These restroom ‘accommodations’ provided to D.H. by the elementary school are not accommodations at all,” the complaint states. “They reinforce the differential treatment and trauma associated with living under the [Accommodations for All Children Act], violating D.H.’s constitutional and statutory rights.”
In a statement on Thursday, HRC Litigation Director Cynthia Cheng-Wun Weaver called state lawmakers that backed the law “power hungry” and accused them of supporting the legislation to ignite their base.
“It is unfortunate that Tennessee lawmakers are using their authority to attack some of our nation’s most vulnerable – our children,” she said.
D.H.’s mother, identified in the suit as A.H., said she felt ashamed to live in an area so hostile to transgender young people.
“Years ago, I chose to move to Tennessee because it was known as ‘the volunteer state,’ whose citizens cared for their neighbors without hesitation – not a state that legalizes discrimination against helpless children,” she said Thursday. “Now, I am embarrassed to say that I live in a state that refuses to see anything beyond my child’s gender.”
“By filing this lawsuit, I am showing my volunteer spirit – because I’m fighting to not only affirm my child’s existence, but also the thousands of transgender and nonbinary children who live in Tennessee.”
Neither the Tennessee Department of Education nor Williamson County Schools immediately responded to Changing America’s request for comment.
Just in: @HRC announces a new lawsuit, filed on Monday, challenging Tennessee’s anti-trans student bathroom bill. Here’s the complaint, brought on behalf of a trans student and her parents in Williamson County. https://t.co/BZ291fYhmapic.twitter.com/SJ4isEhfB9
— Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner (@chrisgeidner) August 4, 2022
The Republican Party and its Religious Right puppet master are targeting the trans community because, sadly, to do so is a winner for them. Most Americans know shit about trans people and their lives.
The Republicans and the preachers can rake in millions of dollars — and motivate their voters to go to the polls — by playing on the fear and ignorance out there.
I started my transition shortly after you did, and while overall things have improved, the far-right nutcases and religious zealots have decided we are a convenient scapegoat, as their previous attempt (trying to scapegoat homosexual people) mostly collapsed (but they are trying to resurrect that garbage too). As much as all of us are beyond fucking tired of the bullshit they continue to spew, and tired of being targets, we need to stay strong and show the world that the hate-mongers are nothing more than delusional liars. I’ll keep standing with you April.
Ditto drag queens. All of them are icky perverts that exist only to molest children. No mention ever of the actual child molesters that, more often than not, are youth pastors or otherwise in the employ of christianity Inc.
Good. Transgender people should be able to use the bathroom and locker rooms under their gender identity. This bill, like “Don’t Say Gay” in Florida, is the gay panic repackaged and is disgraceful.
Sorry, but the whose “separate but equal ” bullshit you’re espousing was proven to be garbage over 6 decades ago. Please keep your transphobia to yourself.
This what happens when the governor and a majority of the state legislators are Evangelicals – they always go after minority groups of all types for disfavored treatment.
True. If not transgender people, then they target the homosexual people, then they target people who are not Christian, then they target people who aren’t the “right type” of Christian…. they need someone to hate so that they don’t look at who they really hate: themselves.
In the end, they’re really claiming that men can’t be trusted..
Ever.
That All men are rapists and perverts who will upend their whole life to get close to a possible naked woman. Huckabee said he would dress up just to get into the shower with school aged girls. People who pass these bills shouldn’t be allowed near women at all, without supervision. Not even their wives.
I think the purpose of these stupid laws is a shortsighted attempt to get transfolk to leave the state, but some are kids who don’t have that option until they are emancipated from their families. The vast majority of the others are people who are gainfully employed and not causing trouble, but only need to use the restroom because they are at work or out going about their business and patronizing local stores and contributing to the economy,so they can’t use the washroom at home. Their only alternative will be to use the bushes, which is creating a needless and avoidable sanitation issue.
“It’s just kind of remarkable to see some of the headlines — the headlines that very clearly are trying to make you afraid of monkeypox or fill-in-the-blank.
“You know, because if you’re not afraid of this there will be something else after that and something else after that.
“These people are determined to make you afraid and do whatever it is they want you to do. And I hope that more and more people choose not to do that.
“That being said, you should know that there’s actually very little data on this vaccine.
“Believe it or not, there’s actually less data on this than on COVID vaccines.” – Florida Surgeon General Joseph Lapado, speaking at a press event alongside DeSantis.
Ladapo, who has refused to disclose his own COVID vaccination status, is affiliated with the far-right anti-vax group, America’s Frontline Doctors.
Early this year the Florida Senate approved him as state surgeon general despite reports that he lied about having treated COVID patients while working at UCLA’s hospital.
During his confirmation hearing, he repeatedly refused to say if he believes that COVID vaccines are effective.
.@GovRonDeSantis reboots Anthony Fauci feud in monkeypox comments, blasting Fauci for 1980s approach to AIDS
Once again this motherfucker is playing Russian roulette with the lives of Floridians. He downplayed covid now he’s downplaying monkeypox. Hey Ron at least act like you give a fuck dude.https://t.co/XXo8iRESG7
“You know, because if you’re not afraid of this there will be something else after that and something else after that. “These people are determined to make you afraid and do whatever it is they want you to do
Once again: CRT, Mr. Potato Head, vaccines, trans girls in sports, BLM, immigrants, teachers, masks, Big Bird, saying ‘gay’, mail in voting, women controlling their own reproduction, etc. etc. etc.
Regressives: “These people are determined to make you afraid and do whatever it is they want you to do”
Also Regressives: “DISNEY GAYS ARE GOING TO CRT TRANS YOUR KIDS, GIVE US YOUR MONEY AND UNLIMITED POLITICAL POWER”
#BREAKING: Gov. Ron DeSantis is suspending State Attorney Andrew Warren, a Democrat, for vowing to not enforce prohibitions on sex changes for minors or restrictions on abortion
Scottie's Playtime 