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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in the landmark transgender medicine case U.S. v Skrmetti, which will decide whether Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause. When arguments commence on December 4, the justices will review testimony from numerous sources — including several doctors previously discredited by lower courts due to lack of experience and anti-trans bias.
As The Guardian reported this week, defense lawyers for the state of Tennessee have submitted testimony from at least five doctors who were reprimanded and/or had their statements thrown out by lower court judges in other gender-affirming care cases. Several of those doctors were hired by right-wing organizations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a group that has been at the forefront of anti-trans legislation in the U.S. and was accused last year of filing numerous anti-LGBTQ+ lawsuits under false pretenses.
One of the most egregious examples named by The Guardian is pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Paul Hruz, who was previously hired by the ADF to testify against gender-affirming care in Arkansas. The judge in that case, striking down Arkansas’ care ban, declared that Hruz and other ADF medical witnesses were “testifying more from a religious doctrinal standpoint rather than that required of experts.”
That accusation was supported by Hruz’s alleged conduct during a 2013 meeting with a trans-affirming parent, in which he instructed the parent to “read Pope John Paul II’s writings on gender,” told her that her trans child was “not normal and would never be normal,” and stated he would never “allow” a gender-affirming clinic to be established at his hospital; most disturbingly, Hruz allegedly declared that “[s]ome children are born in this world to suffer and die.”
Dr. James Cantor, a major name in anti-trans medicine, is also among the doctors testifying in U.S. v Skrmetti despite previously admitting in federal court that he lacks virtually any expertise regarding trans youth. Another, Dr. Stephen Levine, had his testimony tossed out by a West Virginia district court in 2022, with the judge noting at the time that other courts had also dismissed Levine’s testimony for anti-trans bias and “misrepresentations” of gender-affirming care standards. Like Hruz, both Cantor and Levine were previously hired by the ADF, according to The Guardian’s report, which was based on research conducted by the progressive watchdog group Accountability.us.
“The Supreme Court case rests on what can only be described as junk science — unscientific, biased testimony from a small group of doctors who stand far outside of the medical mainstream,” said Accountability.us president Caroline Ciccone in a statement on Thursday. “These so-called experts’ testimony have been discredited by courts already. It’s very telling that they can’t come up with anything better.”
Tennessee’s lawyers will also cite testimony from Dr. Michael Laidlaw, who spread debunked statistics about “desistance” in trans youth to defend Florida’s care ban in 2022; and Dr. Geeta Nangia, who claimed during one Florida court case to have treated “over a thousand patients with gender dysphoria” but was rebuked by a judge for not clarifying how many of those patients she actually supported.
ACLU attorney Chase Strangio, who will argue for the plaintiffs in U.S. v Skrmetti come December, told Them last month that although a Supreme Court decision against gender-affirming care wouldn’t immediately ban that care in the U.S., that outcome would “make it much easier” for President-elect Donald Trump to push a federal ban, as he has promised to do. If the Court does issue such a decision, it will be with the aid of doctors whose views have been repeatedly rejected by other courts and a majority of medical professionals, including the American Medical Association.
“It’s such a strange thing to watch,” said Advocates for Trans Equality senior counsel Sydney Duncan in comments to The Guardian this week. “It’s as if the American Cancer Society recommended a certain standard of care for someone getting chemotherapy, but then a random doctor in a strip mall next to a Domino’s Pizza with no cancer experience or research had a differing opinion, and we’re expected to take him seriously.”
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