The Supreme Court Showdown That Could End Child Mutilation Forever

It’s tempting to get jaded when you spend any amount of time covering politics, or commenting on politics. Very often, you’ll weigh in on a particular issue. You’ll spend a lot of time developing arguments and presenting them. You might break some news. You might call your congressman or write a comment on social media. And then nothing will happen. The people in power might pretend to listen to you, but in the end, you’ll be ignored. That happens time and time again.

That’s why, when the reverse happens – when we actually succeed in bringing about meaningful and substantial change – we should celebrate it. We should call attention to it and then we should carefully consider what to do next. We should think about how to capitalize on what we’ve achieved.

That’s the case right now, as a fight we’ve been waging for several years is about to produce what could very well be one of the most important Supreme Court rulings of our generation.

One of the most important moments in this fight came in the Fall of 2022, when I posted the results of our investigation into the transgender clinic at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

My team and I uncovered evidence that Vanderbilt viewed so-called “gender-affirming procedures” as a money-making operation, by their own admission. They said it on tape. We also proved that Vanderbilt had boasted about giving irreversible hormone drugs to children as young as 13, and about performing double mastectomies on adolescent girls — all in the name of “gender-affirming care.”

These were procedures that, for the most part, people didn’t even realize were happening. Children were being sterilized and butchered, and no one had any idea. That’s why, immediately after we reported on Vanderbilt’s practices, millions of people living in Tennessee — and around the country — called for these “gender clinics” to be shut down. We held our “Rally to End Child Mutilation,” and many of you showed up. That was the rally when several Tennessee lawmakers announced plans to end these practices.

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And that’s exactly what happened.

Within months, in response to our reporting, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers in the Tennessee legislature passed a law called “SB 1.” This law made it a crime to administer puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to children for the purposes of affirming the child’s alleged “gender identity.” Surgeries were also banned.

Just a year earlier, that kind of swift, decisive action from state lawmakers would’ve been unthinkable. Gender ideology was a topic that very few politicians wanted to get involved in — even in Tennessee’s legislature. At the time, circa early 2022, it was easy for many conservatives to accept the Left’s framing of the issue, and move on.

But some conservatives didn’t move on. Instead, they decided to defend the truth, basic biology, and the well-being of Americans — particularly children. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), for example, asked Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson to define the word “woman” during her confirmation hearing. This should’ve been the single easiest question ever asked in the history of confirmation hearings. But infamously, Jackson couldn’t answer it.

Then my film, “What is a Woman?,” was released, and once again, self-described gender experts couldn’t answer the question. It became one of the most-watched documentaries of all-time, in part because people were eager to see this deranged ideology being exposed.

In other words, the culture shifted. But it didn’t shift by accident. It shifted because we made it shift and this company —and more importantly the people who subscribe to us and support our work — were a major part of that.

Matt Walsh/What is a Woman?

Now, two years after I posted my investigation into Vanderbilt, the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in a case called “The United States v. Skrmetti.” The arguments will take place next Wednesday. In the end, this case could very well turn out to be a Dobbs-style earthquake in the fight to protect children in this country.

The name “Skrmetti” in the case refers to Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. He’ll be arguing in defense of Tennessee’s ban on child mutilation, or SB 1. In his brief before the Supreme Court, Skrmetti repeatedly cites The Daily Wire’s reporting on Vanderbilt as a catalyst for SB1. He says voters reacted to our reporting — and that it would be unconstitutional to override what voters want.

He’ll be arguing against the Biden DOJ, along with trans activists at the ACLU. They’re taking the state of Tennessee to court over SB 1. Their argument is that it’s unconstitutional to ban child sex-changes. They’re claiming it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Essentially, they’re alleging that doctors and parents have a constitutional right to castrate, sterilize, and mutilate gender-confused kids.

Before I get into the specifics of “U.S. v. Skrmetti,” and the ramifications of it, I need to point out that bringing this case will be one of the last, official acts of the Biden administration. They’re the ones who filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, demanding that they hear this case after the Sixth Circuit upheld SB 1.

Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images

To put this in context: After suffering a crushing defeat in the last election — an election in which an overwhelming majority of Americans made it clear that they reject gender ideology, especially as it relates to children — the Biden administration is pressing on. They are continuing to argue in court for child castration and sterilization, even after it’s abundantly clear that these procedures are barbaric, and very few Americans actually support them. This is what the Biden administration wants its legacy to be. You can’t afford groceries, violent crime is rampant and the world is falling apart – but at least you can castrate your child.

At the Supreme Court on Wednesday, the Biden administration will be assisted by the ACLU’s lead transgender attorney, who uses the name “Chase Strangio.” When I say that Chase Strangio is the ACLU’s lead transgender attorney, I mean that in two senses. First, Chase Strangio herself identifies as transgender. She’s very clearly a woman trying to pass as a man, and failing. And secondly, Chase Strangio is supposedly one of the ACLU’s foremost experts in the field of trans-related law. She’s currently slated to deliver oral arguments next Wednesday at the Supreme Court.

And that’s not because Strangio is a compelling orator, or anything remotely like that. Quite the opposite, in fact.

For a preview of what these oral arguments will look like, here’s Strangio explaining her view of Tennessee’s bill banning child castration. This is what the nine justices of the Supreme Court can expect to hear next week. And if you’ve never felt pity for Supreme Court justices before, then after you hear this, you’re guaranteed to feel at least some. Let’s listen:

New TransLash Podcast with @imarajones is out now! 🎧 Chase Strangio, @aclu_nationwide attorney and the first openly trans lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court, breaks down U.S. v. Skrmetti. This December 4 case could redefine trans rights in the U.S. pic.twitter.com/ZpWci6ldwW

— translashmedia (@translashmedia) November 17, 2024

This is what we can expect for around 15 to 20 minutes during oral arguments next Wednesday. A woman pretending to be a man will pretend, with maximum indignation, that it’s an “overreach” by the federal government to protect children from castration.

Of course, these are people who would love to see the federal government set the price of groceries, or raise your taxes in order to pay the living expenses of illegal aliens, or throw the leading presidential candidate in prison. But when there’s the possibility that the government might intervene to stop child butchery, suddenly they pretend to be small-government liberals. They ask, “how could the government possibly interfere in what private citizens want to do?” – as if that doesn’t happen all the time; as if that’s not what all laws are.

Well, in this case, it’s pretty simple, actually. “Chase Strangio” answered her own question in that video you just saw. The idea that we should honor the wishes of a two-year-old girl who “asserts herself” and “recognizes herself” as a boy is, to every reasonable person, completely insane. It insults the intelligence of anyone who’s ever been around a two-year-old, much less raised one. It’s not uncommon for two-year-olds to “assert themselves” as superheroes, or dinosaurs, or household pets. That’s particularly true if an adult has planted that idea in their head, in one way or another. That doesn’t mean we should tell these children that they’re actually dinosaurs, and then pump their bodies full of dinosaur-affirming hormones.

This shouldn’t need to be explained. It’s common sense. And as you heard, Strangio’s argument at the Supreme Court will be that an alleged “consensus” among “experts” should override your common sense, along with the democratic will of the people.

This is an argument that, in his brief that was submitted to the Supreme Court, Skrmetti demolishes for about a dozen reasons. For one thing – even if you agree for some reason that experts are entitled to some degree of deference, which they shouldn’t be – there’s still a problem. And that problem is that we have clear evidence that various “experts” in this area have been compromised for political reasons.

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For example, in his filings with the Supreme Court, Skrmetti cites evidence that Rachel Levine, the trans-identifying HHS Assistant Secretary for Health, pressured the organization that sets the guidelines for so-called “trans healthcare,” in order to lift all age limits for these gender procedures. I’ve previously outlined the sordid and disturbing history of this organization, which is called WPATH. These are quacks who have no place in medicine whatsoever. No hospital should be paying any attention to them. In internal documents, WPATH admits it has no idea what it’s doing, as Michael Shellenberger documented in the leaked WPATH files.

But on top of that, WPATH is an explicitly political enterprise. In communications with WPATH, Levine stated that WPATH’s initial “failure” to lift all age restrictions on “gender affirming” procedures for children was, “proving a barrier to optimal policy progress.” So WPATH relented.

As The New York Times reports:

The draft guidelines, released in late 2021, recommended lowering the age minimums to 14 for hormonal treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgeries, and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies. The proposed age limits were eliminated in the final guidelines outlining standards of care.

So WPATH did what the Biden administration wanted, which is to tell hospitals that child butchery is acceptable at any age. And that decision matters a great deal, because many major hospitals right now rely on WPATH’s guidelines.

In their brief, Tennessee went on to provide other evidence that WPATH is compromised. At one point, for instance, WPATH commissioned Johns Hopkins to produce some evidence backing their guidelines. But they gave up on that after the Johns Hopkins’ review found, “little to no evidence about children and adolescents” benefitting from these alleged treatments.”

That highlights another problem for the Biden administration and the ACLU, which is that it’s not even true that there’s a consensus among experts on this topic. In fact, there’s nothing even approaching a consensus. Health officials in the UK, Norway, Finland and Sweden have all concluded that gender interventions on children “pose significant risks with unproven benefits.” Various groups in this country, including the American College of Pediatricians, have come to the same conclusion.

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Another problem here – one that Tennessee is going to bring up at the Supreme Court – is that there’s recently been an unexplained and very drastic change in the patient population of alleged transgender individuals. In just the past few years, the percentage of children identifying as transgender has doubled, from zero-point-seven percent to one-point-four percent. Meanwhile, the percentage of trans-identifying adults has remained constant, at about zero-point-five percent of the total population. By some estimates, Skrmetti notes, the number of children presenting with gender dysphoria has tripled in just four years, from 2017 to 2021. And these children are now overwhelmingly adolescent girls, when historically, trans-identifying patients were typically adolescent and adult males.

So we’re dealing with a patient population that’s rapidly changing, in ways that can only be explained by a social contagion. And rationally, the solution to a social contagion isn’t to pump children full of sterilizing hormones. The treatment is to take a step back and address the social contagion. And one way to do that is to immediately ban the butchery and sterilization of children, which is what voters in Tennessee — and many other states — have decided to do.

The fundamental legal issue in this case is whether these bans on child butchery somehow violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. To make that argument, the ACLU is saying that Tennessee’s ban discriminates against certain patients on the basis of their sex.

This is an argument that makes very little sense because Tennessee’s bill doesn’t classify anyone based on sex, or any other “protected characteristic.” Instead, the law sets age-based restrictions on procedures like castration, sterilization and surgery. And we ban certain medical procedures based on age all the time.

That was the legal basis that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals used in order to uphold Tennessee’s law last year. They concluded there was no sex-based discrimination at all, and therefore no need to apply any “heightened” standard of review to the law. That ruling was a devastating blow to the trans agenda, as I explained at the time. It was a complete takedown of the idea that SB1 violates the Equal Protection Clause. As the Sixth Circuit explained, the point of the ban is to protect every child equally — whether they’re boys or girls.

If the Supreme Court denies this challenge by the ACLU and the DOJ on the same grounds, they would give the legal all-clear to Congress to do something it should’ve done a long time ago, which is to pass a national ban on so-called “gender transitions” for children. This is not a state’s rights issue. It’s a human rights issue. Children have the right to be protected from castration and mutilation.

As best I can tell, Republicans haven’t introduced any kind of legislation that would ban these procedures on children at a nationwide level. Last year, before he became the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson and other Republicans floated the possibility of a nationwide ban. But they haven’t followed through.

It’s time to change that, before any more children are harmed. A national ban on this barbarism would prevent gross human rights abuses like the one I described yesterday, in the case of Jeff Younger.

But even aside from all of that — this is a winning political issue. There’s no reason not to do it. Exit polls that were commissioned by Democrats showed that, among swing voters who voted for Trump and ultimately decided the election, Kamala Harris’ ridiculous stance on gender ideology was the single most important issue in their minds.

People are tired of this. So there’s no reason we shouldn’t press the issue. Force Democrats to come out and make the argument for castrating 12 year old boys. See how that works for them.

The truth is that no Democrat — not one — wants this fight. Other than activists like Chase Strangio and the last remnants of the Biden administration, they all know how crazy it makes them sound to oppose a ban like this. And if they don’t want the fight, that’s all the more reason to give it to them.

With this case before the Supreme Court — and conservative control of the entire federal government — we’re closer than we’ve ever been to dealing a crushing and total defeat against the gender cult. All Republicans need to do now is to follow in Tennessee’s footsteps at the national level. Tell all of these activist “doctors” and butchers that they will never again sterilize or castrate another child. Banish this insanity from the country so decisively and so thoroughly that it never returns. That’s what voters, in both parties, are asking for. It’s time Republicans gave it to them.