National Roundup

Tennessee 
State closes in on trans youth care ban; lawsuit pledged

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee’s Republican-led Senate approved a measure Monday that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors, spurring civil rights groups to promise an immediate lawsuit if and when it becomes law.

The Senate’s 26-6 vote keeps the bill on a fast track to passage even though there’s more work to be done on the House side. GOP legislative leaders and Republican Gov. Bill Lee spoke favorably about the ban even before a bill was filed.

“I believe that every Tennessean should have an opportunity to live a life of purpose and dignity in a lawful manner that they choose. And if that involves seeking permanent, irreversible alterations to your body, I support your right to do so — when you are an adult,” said Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, a Republican.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Tennessee, and Lambda Legal on Monday promised they were prepping a lawsuit.

The push in Tennessee comes as state lawmakers across the United States are advancing attacks on gender-affirming medical care for young people. Similar bills are being advanced in Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Dakota. In Utah, the Republican governor recently signed a ban into law, and judges have temporarily blocked similar laws in Arkansas and Alabama.

Yet Tennessee in particular has been caught in the center of this conflict ever since video surfaced on social media last year of a Nashville doctor touting that gender-affirming procedures are “huge money makers” for hospitals.

The video prompted calls by Tennessee’s Republican leaders for an investigation into Vanderbilt University Medical Center, but to date, it’s unknown if any authorities have done so. The private nonprofit hospital said it had provided only a handful of gender-affirming surgeries to minors over the years but has put a temporary pause on the procedures to review its policies.

On average, VUMC has provided five gender affirming surgeries to minors every year since its transgender clinic opened in 2018. All were over the age of 16 and had parental consent, and none received genital procedures.

Meanwhile, GOP leaders have used the incident to try to expand Tennessee’s ban on transgender medical treatment for children. These services have been available in the U.S. for more than a decade and are endorsed by major medical associations.

“We are bringing up issues that take away people’s freedoms and focusing on things that people then have to then fight for so they can just be who they are,” said Democratic Sen. Heidi Campbell

If the Senate’s version is enacted, doctors would be prohibited from providing gender-affirming care to anyone under the age of 18, including prescribing puberty blockers and hormones.

However, the legislation spells out some exceptions, including allowing doctors to perform these medical services if the patient’s care had begun prior to July 1, 2023 which is when the ban is proposed to go into effect. The bill then states that that care must end March 31, 2024.

“Tennessee legislators seem hellbent on joining the growing roster of states determined to jeopardize the health and lives of transgender youth, in direct opposition to the overwhelming body of scientific and medical evidence supporting this care as appropriate and necessary,” said Lambda Legal Staff Attorney for Youth Sruti Swaminathan in a statement. “And, just as we have done in other states engaging in this anti-science and discriminatory fear-mongering, so too we will do in Tennessee and challenge this bill should it be signed into law.”

 

Wisconsin
Lawmakers seek to redefine illegal strip searches

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin introduced a bill Monday that would expand the definition of illegal strip searches after a school superintendent told six girls to remove their clothes during a search last year for vaping devices.

Prosecutors charged Suring School District Superintendent Kelly Casper in February 2022 with six counts of false imprisonment after she took six female students into a bathroom and told them to disrobe so she could search for vaping devices. The girls, who were between ages 14 and 17, stripped to their underwear, and the search netted two vape cartridges. Another student admitted having a vape on her, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported.

State law defines a strip search as a search in which a person’s genitals or private areas are exposed to view or touched by the searcher. Any school district employee who strip-searches a student is guilty of a misdemeanor. But Oconto County District Edward Burke said the searches in this case didn’t violate state law because the students were in their underwear.

Casper resigned in June. A judge dismissed the false imprisonment charges in July, saying the girls likely knew they could have left the bathroom.

The new bill, authored by Reps. David Steffen and Elijah Behnke, along with Sen. Eric Wimberger, would define a strip search as one in which a person’s genitalia or private areas, or underwear-clad genitalia or private areas, are exposed or touched by the searcher.

“We are committed to protecting the privacy of our students and this legislation reflects a common-sense change,” Steffen said in a statement.

 

California
Judge halts LA plan to destroy trees for sidewalk repairs

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A plan to chop down as many as 13,000 trees while repairing Los Angeles sidewalks has been halted by a judge, who sided with advocates who say the city can make the fixes while preserving the shade and greenery.

Superior Court judge Mitchell Beckloff declared the environmental impact report for the city’s proposed sidewalk repair program “fundamentally flawed,” the Southern California News Group reported Saturday.

The judge’s ruling last month came in a lawsuit filed by advocacy groups who accused the city of failing to consider alternative repair methods that would preserve mature trees.

“Other cities manage their sidewalk tree conflict easily and for whatever reason LA does not,” Jeanne McConnell of the group Angelenos for Trees told the news group.

The city argued that its sidewalk repair program and associated tree removals was a justified effort to comply with a 2016 class action settlement that requires LA to spend $1.4 billion to improve its walkways for those with disabilities.

The judge ruled that the impact report failed to thoroughly examine the effects on wildlife and the environmental consequences of trading mature trees for young replacement trees.

The city may now appeal the court’s decision, create a new environmental impact report to address the problems identified, or return to the drawing board with a new sidewalk repair plan.