Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor signed onto a court brief denouncing cross-sex drugs and transgender surgeries as “experimental” and raising concerns about the irreversible consequences and mutilating practices associated with so-called “gender affirming” care.
Taylor joined 19 other state attorneys general last month in an amicus brief that was spearheaded by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey for the Fourth Circuit U.S. Appeals Court.
Taylor signed onto the brief even though the Alaska Dept. of Health & Social Services agreed in 2021 to use public funds to pay for surgeries and hormones that alter a person’s appearance in order to make them appear as the opposite sex. Alaska accepted a court settlement to include these controversial procedures in its Medicaid program after being sued in federal district court. Plaintiffs alleged that Alaska was violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Affordable Care Act.
Prior to sending the May 25 court brief from 20 attorneys general, Missouri AG Bailey signed off on a new emergency rule for his state that imposes limits on life altering surgeries for both minors and adults who suffer from gender confusion.
The Republican AGs emphasized that is it objectively wrong to suggest that irreversible mutilations and powerful hormone treatments are somehow “evidence-based.”
LGBTQ activists, with the legal aid of the ACLU, are suing to block the new rule in Missouri.
The amicus brief defends each state’s right to enact rules over certain medical procedures and interventions that are fraught with extensive uncertainty and widespread scientific disagreement.
The brief raises serious objections to two court rulings against West Virginia and North Carolina, which blocked the states’ ability to set limits on transgender interventions.
The AGs argue that the science is simply unsettled when it comes to mutilating surgeries, cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers.
The Republican AGs emphasized that is it objectively wrong to suggest that irreversible mutilations and powerful hormone treatments are somehow “evidence-based.”
“[A]ny claim that chemical or surgical intervention to treat gender dysphoria is ‘evidence-based’ or settled within the medical community is simply wrong,” they said. “For these interventions, the evidence is lacking.”
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The AGs noted that many European countries now consider these procedures to be risky and lacking in scientific rigor.
The brief concludes with an appeal to the court to give states broad leeway in regulating and restricting practices that are broadly disputed as “areas of uncertainty.”
In addition to Alaska and Missouri, other states that signed onto the court brief were:
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia.
