FIRST ON FOX: Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is defending his state’s right to ban sex-change surgeries for children ahead of oral arguments in the Supreme Court this fall.
The law, passed in 2023, prohibits medical providers from performing sex-change surgeries on minors as well as puberty blockers and other hormone-suppressing treatments.
The American Civil Liberties Union is one of the plaintiffs in the case challenging Tennessee’s law. The Supreme Court reconvened for its October term last week.
Skrmetti has filed an amicus brief alongside Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, doubling down on the Volunteer State’s ban.
“The reason it’s getting attention now is because it’s fairly new,” Skrmetti told Fox News Digital in an interview. “We’ve seen a really dramatic increase in both the overall number of kids who are accessing these procedures, and especially the number of girls who are getting these procedures, that number has skyrocketed from where it was, and it was only a matter of time before this sort of elevated itself as an issue.”
A transgender flag unfurled on a pole. (Getty Images)
He added, “There are a lot of lawsuits involving gender identity issues, and so, you know, it’s a consequence of this going from something that was not particularly prominent to something that is very prominent, with a lot, lot, lot more kids affected by it, and a lot more doctors engaged in the practice of providing these transition treatments.”
“This is a case about kids,” Skrmetti said. “This is a law that differentiates on the basis of age. And if you look at the evidence, the evidence is most kids who have gender identity issues outgrow them.”
Bailey told Fox News Digital in a statement that it is “imperative” that the Supreme Court know “what is happening to America’s children on the ground in these clinics.”
“Radical activists are lying to parents and preying upon vulnerable children. When a credible whistleblower comes forward and swears under oath that children are being experimented on without parental knowledge, I take that seriously,” Bailey said.
The 18-page brief, which was filed to the Supreme Court last week, includes affidavit testimony from a Missouri whistleblower – identified as Jamie Reed – claiming transgender medical centers have pressured parents into “consenting” to such transgender treatments “by falsely telling parents their children will kill themselves if they did not receive interventions,” the document states.
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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, pictured here, signed onto Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s amicus brief. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“There is every reason to believe these problems affect more than just the largest transgender center in Missouri,” the briefing states. “The whistleblower testified she was aware of similar problems in other clinics; New York Times and other reporting have corroborated these problems occurring in other clinics.”
In her affidavit, Reed, a former Washington University’s infectious diseases division employee and self-identified leftist, recounted, “Doctors at the Center routinely pressured parents into ‘consenting’ by pushing those parents, threatening them, and bullying them,” even stating to parents, “You can either have a living son or a dead daughter,” in front of their children. Reed first went public with her experience last year.
Reed also alleges that the center has continued medical interventions even after parents have revoked consent. She describes a scenario in which an outside ethicist expressed shock at the center’s practices during a consultation.
The affidavit also claims that the actual suicide rate among transgender youth is low, citing an analysis of over 15,000 patient records from a leading gender clinic that identified a maximum suicide rate of 0.03%, with no significant change in suicide rates before and after medical interventions. Despite this data, Reed claims that parents were misled about the risks of not consenting to treatment.
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Youth protesting for transgender surgeries for kids. (Getty Images)
Reed’s affidavit states that the center advertised comprehensive mental health assessments, but in practice, she was rarely allowed to schedule patients for these evaluations due to strict limitations imposed by the center. When mental health sessions did occur, they were often limited to just one to two hours before gender transition interventions began. This approach allegedly led to medical interventions for minors with unmanaged comorbidities, including autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, PTSD and eating disorders.
Reed also alleges that clinicians from the center misled the Missouri legislature by denying that minors received gender transition surgeries, despite evidence that the center referred minors for such procedures. Washington University has since acknowledged performing surgeries on minors prior to new state laws, indicating ongoing referrals despite policy changes against them, the brief states.
The center also did not collect custody agreements from patients, which led to non-guardian adults bringing children in for treatment without parental consent.
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“Because of this policy, children would present at the clinic with non-guardian adults after guardian adults refused consent,” the brief states.
Transgender treatments for children have become a hot button issue as the 2024 general election is only weeks away. While more states have banned the practice, other liberal states have passed laws shielding medical providers from criminal lawsuits brought on by more restrictive states. Last week, medical advocacy group Do No Harm conservatively identified 5,747 minor patients who received sex-change surgery, and 13,994 received some sort of gender reassignment treatment between 2019 and 2023 across the country.