“When the Biden-Harris administration sued Alabama and demanded that the state allow sex-change procedures on children, we fought back. Through court-ordered discovery, Alabama exposed a truly shocking medical, legal, and political scandal. Internal documents from the federal government and radical advocacy groups showed that the Biden-Harris administration, ‘social justice lawyers,’ and self-appointed medical ‘experts’ manipulated medical guidelines for the purpose of convincing courts to abolish age limits for sterilizing chemical treatments and surgeries for kids,” said Attorney General Marshall. “It is no wonder the Department of Justice fought so hard to shut down discovery in Alabama’s case. The administration secretly helped craft these purportedly ‘evidence-based’ guidelines and knew there was precious little evidence behind them, but still told courts to defer to them. We ask the Supreme Court to reject the administration’s cynical argument that the Constitution now mandates States like Alabama and Tennessee use those guidelines to harm children.”

The brief highlights how the Biden-Harris administration conspired with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and other advocacy organizations to influence guideline documents meant to be used by physicians caring for minors suffering from gender dysphoria. The brief details how senior officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services pressured WPATH to remove age minimums for chemical and surgical interventions and how WPATH relied on advice from “social justice lawyers” to evade evidence-based review for its guidelines. The administration has told the Supreme Court that “overwhelming evidence” supports the use of giving gender dysphoric kids “puberty blockers and hormones,” but well before it made that representation, officials at HHS acknowledged that “there is little/no evidence about children and adolescents.”

Alabama’s brief also argues that the ongoing political and medical scandal highlights the dangers of allowing courts to transfer authority from legislatures to self-appointed experts like WPATH. Such a shift does not resolve political disputes, the brief argues, but simply moves them to less transparent institutions. By granting power to these “expert” groups, courts risk turning them into tools for political agendas, which is exactly what has happened here.

Attorney General Marshall has played a critical role in the fight against the Biden-Harris administration’s push for irreversible sex-change procedures for minors, successfully defending Alabama’s law and leading briefs in support of other states’ laws. In January, the Eleventh Circuit cleared the way for Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act to be enforced.