https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/washington-state-passes-bill-to-cover

>Washington State made history on Wednesday when it became the first state in the country to pass legislation increasing access to hormone therapy.

>HB 1971 declares that health care plans who cover hormone treatments “must provide reimbursement for a 12-month refill of covered prescription hormone therapy obtained at one time by the enrollee,” unless a doctor prescribes otherwise or the hormone in question is a controlled substance. (Testosterone, for example, will be exempt from the policy.)

>The bill received bipartisan support in the State Senate, passing 40-9, including six Republicans. All nine votes against the bill were from the GOP.

>Senator Keith Wagoner was one such Republican who voted in favor of HB 1971. He said he he was supporting the policy in spite of “fringes” online which had “inflamed” public debate by focusing squarely on the HRT’s association with trans-affirming care.

>“That is such a small part of what this bill does,” Wagoner told the Senate. He said he was speaking out in part because his own daughter relies on hormone therapy. As a survivor of brain cancer, which impacted her pituitary gland, she will likely be taking hormones for the rest of her life. The current timeframe for receiving hormones, which may limit people to a six-month, three-month or one-month supply, is a constant stressor for his family, he said.

>“The bill will alleviate a lot of suffering,” Wagoner concluded.

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/judge-blocks-passport-ban-citing

>In a landmark decision issued late Friday, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration’s passport policy targeting transgender Americans. The executive order, which required that passport gender markers reflect a person’s assigned sex at birth, effectively reversed three decades of precedent and left many applications stalled in bureaucratic limbo. The judge ruled the policy was “arbitrary and capricious,” likely in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act, and the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The judge also ruled that the decision was based in animus and discrimination towards transgender people. While the injunction currently applies only to the named plaintiffs, a broader ruling protecting all transgender Americans is expected in the coming weeks.

>“The plaintiffs have also demonstrated a likelihood of success on their separate argument that, under any standard of review, the Executive Order and Passport Policy are based on irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans and therefore offend our Nation’s constitutional commitment to equal protection for all Americans. In addition, the plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to succeed on their claim that the Passport Policy is arbitrary and capricious, and that it was not adopted in compliance with the procedures required by the Paperwork Reduction Act and Administrative Procedure Act,” ruled the judge.

>The judge, when evaluating whether or not the transgender plaintiffs were being discriminated against in a way that likely violates their equal protection under the law, ruled that they likely were. This is because the order targets transgender people based on sex, an act that triggers a higher degree of constitutional scrutiny: “As to the first policy change, applicants are explicitly treated differently based on their sex assigned at birth. A person who identifies as female can receive a passport marked “F” if her sex assigned at birth was female, but not if her sex assigned at birth was male. Likewise, a person who identifies as male can receive a passport marked “M” if his sex assigned at birth was male, but not if his sex assigned at birth was female… Viewed from any angle, that amounts to a classification based on sex.”

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/anti-trans-activist-hadley-freeman

Anti-Trans Activist Hadley Freeman Thinks UK Court Win Means People Have To Be Her Friend

>Hadley Freeman—a columnist whose anti-trans positions have made her a darling of the UK’s gender-critical movement—took to the Sunday Times this weekend to spike the ball after a devastating UK Supreme Court ruling that sharply curtailed the rights of transgender people. The court’s decision, which determined that transgender women are not, for the purposes of the Equality Act, legally women, opened the door to widespread legal discrimination. In the wake of the ruling, Britain’s major papers handed column inches to gender-critical commentators like Freeman, sidelining the mass protests that erupted across the country in defense of trans rights. But Freeman, instead of celebrating her legal victory in full, devoted space to lamenting the friendships she’s lost over her views—and appears to believe, strangely, that this ruling might somehow win them back.

>“I’ve been writing about the effects of gender ideology for more than a decade, and in that time I’ve had to leave a job I thought I’d have forever, I’ve been publicly denounced by people I thought were friends, and I’ve been blacklisted from more events than I can count,” complains Freeman—who also takes time to denounce the so-called “abuse” she claims to have received from critics, including Doctor Who actor David Tennant, whose supposed offense is being the supportive parent of a non-binary child.

>Freeman and other UK-based anti-trans activists are celebrating a recent Supreme Court ruling that hands a sweeping victory to the country’s anti-trans movement. The court determined that transgender women are not considered women under the Equality Act, effectively opening the door to widespread legal discrimination. The ruling went even further, declaring that lesbian women would not be considered lesbians if they are in relationships with transgender women—a revelation that will no doubt come as a surprise to the many lesbian couples in the UK who defy that logic by simply existing. Similar arguments are now surfacing in the United States, where a looming Supreme Court case, United States v. Skrmetti, could determine whether transgender Americans are entitled to equal protection under the Constitution.

Mississippi Supreme Court Allows Judge to Block Name Changes for Trans People Under 21

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/mississippi-supreme-court-allows

>The Mississippi Supreme Court has ruled that an 18-year-old trans man is not yet old enough to be granted a name change by the state, even with parental consent; he will have to wait until he is 21 years old, the court said.

>Mississippians as young as 17 years old (for boys) and 15 years old (for girls) may get married. They may have a child and choose a name for that child. But the courts denied the name change request of SBM, a trans man with the full support of his parents in his transition, because they found 18 years old is not an adequate age to ensure “maturity” and warrant such a “life-altering” decision.

>Unlike most states, Mississippi’s “age of majority,” or the age where the state recognizes someone as an adult, is 21, not 18. This means Mississippians under 21 years old cannot enter legally binding contracts in many instances, without parental sign-off.

>“Denial of an adult or minor name change based on transgender identity has been universally rejected in any U.S. jurisdiction in which it has been considered – except Mississippi," McKenna Raney, LGBTQ Justice Project staff attorney at the ACLU of Mississippi, told The Advocate.

>Name changes related to gender transition are singled out. Other name change requests—such as an 18-year-old woman who wants to take her husband’s last name—do not seem to be subjected to the same level of scrutiny.

“Infected an Entire Generation”: AG Bondi Targets Trans-Affirming Health Care in Leaked Memo

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/infected-an-entire-generation-ag

>“There is a radical ideological agenda being pushed throughout every aspect of American life,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi wrote. The radical ideology of, according to Bondi, “gender.”

>On April 23, Bondi issued a memorandum seeking to turn President Donald Trump’s crackdown on trans-affirming health care providers via executive order into a reality. The document was obtained and released in full by legal reporter Chris Geidner but has not been independently verified by Erin in the Morning.

>It is only “an internal memorandum from the attorney general — guidance implementing an earlier anti-transgender executive order from President Donald Trump that has itself already been partially enjoined in multiple courts,” Geidner wrote. In other words, it does not hold the weight of law, but it may empower anti-trans officials to further target trans-affirming health care by zeroing in on providers—or at least give them the appearance of being emboldened, which could lead more hospitals to veer into the trend of overcompliance out of fear of potential litigation.

>Titled “Preventing the Mutilation of American Children,” the memo starts by rattling off a series of false and misleading anti-trans talking points. It calls “transgenderism” a far-left “ideology” which has “infected an entire generation of children.” Here is what this means for trans Americans.