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--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm John Bickley.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I'm Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: Joining us now to discuss the SCOTUS ruling on transgender procedures on children is Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Scrimetti.
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: Thank you for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So we have a major ruling on an extremely serious and sensitive issue here, child gender transition procedures. You banned it in Tennessee. We had plaintiffs argue that this was violating the 14th Amendment. Now we have this 6-3 ruling in your favor.
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: This is a really important ruling. This is an issue that's come up very quickly. It affects an increasingly large number of kids. And the evidence that keeps coming in shows more and more that there is a huge risk to kids from these procedures with very little, if any, benefit.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So it's really important that our legislatures be allowed to follow the evidence and do what they need to do to make sure kids are protected. Now, all the conservative justices ruled in your favor, six to three. So a really overwhelming victory.
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: I wanted to read from Chief Justice John Roberts, who penned the court's opinion. He highlights something extremely kind of amazing, actually. So he says, quote, the plaintiffs contort the meaning of the term medical treatment. He also writes that notably absent from their framing is a key aspect of any medical treatment, the underlying medical concern the treatment is intended to address.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So how significant is it that the plaintiffs actually left out the medical arguments for transition procedures?
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: So the main argument from the other side when we did the oral argument in front of the court was, if you have a boy who wants testosterone to resolve a developmental defect, then they can get it. But a girl who wants testosterone to deepen her voice can't. And they thought, the dissenting justices thought that this was some sort of discrimination. But with any medical treatment, you're not just handing someone a drug. You're giving them a treatment to treat a specific condition. And different drugs have different effects on different conditions. And we differentiate between those purposes all the time.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So I thought that was a fatal flaw in the argument on the other side. And clearly the strong majority of the court agreed.
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: Now all three left justices ruled against this. What was the argument for the dissent?
--:-- Georgia Howe: At the oral argument the two big issues were, number one, looking at the medical treatments kind of in isolation from the underlying medical purpose, and number two, looking at just basic equal protection law, looking at Loving versus Virginia and saying, if you treat one person one way and another person differently, and the differentiating factor is who they are, then that's discrimination.
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: And here they were trying to say, if you're not giving kids these treatments because they're transgender, then you're discriminating against them. But here the court said the issue is not their transgender status. The issue is which specific medical condition you're treating with which specific treatments. And that's something that states have regulated for centuries.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So again, it comes back to if you can't make the medical case for these procedures, then how can you defend carrying out these procedures for gender transition treatment?
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: We already have over two dozen states with laws restricting or banning these procedures. Is this ruling going to set the stage for even more states to follow Tennessee's lead?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, it opens the door for it. And what's really going to push it is the medical evidence. If you look at these European countries that had embraced so-called gender-affirming care and allowed it broadly, given kids loads of access to it, a lot of them, having looked at the evidence, are severely restricting or prohibiting these treatments. You look at what's going on in the United Kingdom, in the Scandinavian countries. People who had embraced this are pulling back because the evidence shows that there's a huge risk to kids and very little, if any, benefit.
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: And if we want to do right by our kids, we need to follow the evidence and make sure that they're getting care that is actually helping them. The evidence shows, and a bipartisan supermajority of the Tennessee legislature heard from the experts and agreed, the evidence shows that kids are much more at risk from these treatments than kids should be.
--:-- Georgia Howe: This all began with Matt Walsh here at The Daily Wire exposing what was happening behind the scenes at Vanderbilt. Have you seen any compliance issues from Vanderbilt with this law?
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: Yeah, I'm not aware of any violations of this law in Tennessee. You know, they got an injunction against it, the plaintiffs did, very early on. We filed an emergency stay motion with the Court of Appeals. And ever since then, the law's been in effect in Tennessee, and I'm not aware of any noncompliance.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What about other states with sanctuary policies? Is there any mechanisms in Tennessee to address issues where other states may violate the principles established here in Tennessee and maybe allow residents to have access to those procedures or medical treatments through other states?
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: I mean people can go to other states and do what's legal in other states. You know, there are constitutional issues there. We can't stop Maine from doing within the borders of Maine what they want to do. But if anybody has a sanctuary state policy that, say, lets people send drugs into Tennessee and purports to shield them from subpoenas or protect them from judgments against them, that violates the Constitution of the United States.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The full faith and credit clause says that Tennessee's laws are binding in Tennessee. Other states can't get cute and try to find ways around that. And we've seen a lot of states try to do this. I think it's a bad idea. They shouldn't do it. And if they keep it up, they're going to end up in court and they're going to lose.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What about in situations where you have parents who differ in terms of their views on what kinds of procedures should be allowed for their children? Are there protections for residents of Tennessee for parents who are trying to protect against that?
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: So, you know, there are some gnarly issues there. There was a parental rights question in the court below that the Supreme Court didn't take. And, you know, there are a lot of issues related to custody, related to parents who disagree with respect to medical treatment, with respect to residency. Some of that stuff still needs to be hashed out.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But given the weight of the medical evidence and the trajectory of the evidence, I mean, there's just more and more evidence coming in showing that this is bad for kids and that the evidence before that purported to say it was good was fraudulent.
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: You know, it may be that the science overtakes these legal questions before they ever come to a head. One more question about that fraudulent evidence. Do you see legal ramifications for people who are knowingly moving forward promoting these kinds of procedures against what the science actually said?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Those are some very fact-based questions, and I don't want to say anything specific about any specific individuals. But if you are receiving federal funds to do research, if you are advancing your research in a way that makes you money, and you know that part of that is materially not true, that could be a very, very significant legal problem for you.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, Attorney General, congratulations on this big win. A lot of people here in Tennessee very, very happy about this.
--:-- Jonathan Scrimetti: Thank you so much for joining us.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Scrimetti.
--:-- John Bickley: Joining us now is Chloe Cole, a detransitioner turned activist who's been speaking out against transgender medical procedures on children.
--:-- Chloe Cole: Hey, thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So this is a massive ruling, a landmark ruling. Did the court get it right?
--:-- Chloe Cole: Absolutely. I mean I believe that every child in America deserves the chance to grow up whole and to be given the time to do so and this is a ruling that is going to allow children that time that I never was given I somebody who went through this as a child.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I seen just how absolutely horrific it is not to just go through the process of a medical transition, but to do so while you're still developing. I was put on puberty blockers, a chemical castration drug to stop my puberty and weekly testosterone injections at the age of 13. And at 15 years old, I underwent an irreversible surgery to remove my breasts.
--:-- Chloe Cole: Absolutely no child should ever be given the chance to go through any of this because it is abusive, it's detrimental to their development, and they deserve better.
--:-- Georgia Howe: You've done a lot of activism, obviously, on this issue. Are you seeing even more momentum in other states? What are you seeing on the ground?
--:-- Chloe Cole: I think there are 26 other states now that have filed similar laws, that have passed similar laws to protect the children of other states from puberty blockers, from the administration of cross-sex hormones and other drugs, and from both the breast surgeries and the genital surgeries.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I think that this ruling is going to allow for many more states that were previously on the fence to pass their own protections.
--:-- Chloe Cole: Did you get a chance to look at the arguments on the other side for this ruling?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yes, I have. And I mean, I think it's just incredible that there were three justices who voted no against reality, against the protection of American children. Because it's so clear that there is really not any evidence in support of performing these procedures on children under the age of 18.
--:-- Chloe Cole: And that was one of the arguments. There's so little backing, for any of these treatments in general.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, this whole process from transition as a young teen to detransition to now activism against these procedures, this must be a pretty dramatic journey for you. But also, I would think rewarding now that you're really seeing the fruits of your labor. How's that journey been for you?
--:-- Chloe Cole: I mean, it's been an incredibly transformative experience for me to be able to turn what used to be a very traumatic and painful experience into something for the greater good, where I can help other children, help other families from going through what I did and helping them to pull them out of it, and to be able to use my lived experience to convince lawmakers and these other people in power to do the right thing, to fight for their constituents, to fight for the families who they are taking care of.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Really powerful. Thank you so much for talking with us.
--:-- Chloe Cole: Thank you.
--:-- John Bickley: That was activist Chloe Cole, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Bye.
