A New York county’s law banning transgender women from playing on female sports teams at county-run parks and recreational facilities has been halted for now.
A state appeals court on Wednesday barred Nassau County from enforcing the ban while a legal challenge brought on behalf of a local women’s roller derby league plays out.
The decision comes after a lower court judge upheld the local law Monday, and the New York Civil Liberties Union, which had sued on the roller derby league’s behalf, vowed to challenge the ruling.
Judge R. Bruce Cozzens had ruled the county ban was “narrowly tailored” and “does not categorically exclude transgender individuals from athletic participation” as they can still play in coed sports leagues.
But the state appellate division, in its decision, said that making the women’s roller derby league become coed would “change the identity of the league,” jeopardizing not just its status with the sport’s governing body but also its ability to grow its membership and find teams to compete against.
Amanda “Curly Fry” Urena, president of the Long Island Roller Rebels, said players were “thrilled” the higher court saw through Nassau County’s “transphobic and cruel ban.”
Gabriella Larios, an attorney with the NYCLU, said the ruling “made it crystal clear that any attempt to ban trans women and girls from sports is prohibited by our state’s anti-discrimination laws.”
Gabriella Larios, staff attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union, at United Skates of America.Jeenah Moon / AP file
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman had proposed the ban as a way to protect girls and women from getting injured while competing against transgender women. It would have affected more than 100 sports facilities in the county on Long Island next to New York City.
The Republican, in an emailed statement, said the county will “continue to protect the integrity and safety of women’s sports.” A spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to follow-up questions about whether it would comply with the judge’s order.
Blakeman first imposed the ban through an executive order, but it was struck down after a lawsuit from the roller derby league and the NYCLU. The county’s Republican-controlled Legislature then passed a law containing the ban, setting off another round of litigation.
Three of the nation’s largest public school districts stand to lose $24 million after missing a Trump administration deadline to agree to change policies supporting transgender students, officials said Wednesday.
The U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights had given New York City Schools, Chicago Public Schools and Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia until Tuesday to agree to stop giving students access to locker rooms and restrooms corresponding with their gender identity or risk losing funding for specialty magnet schools.
In letters to the districts Sept. 16, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, Craig Trainor, said the practice violates Title IX, which forbids discrimination based on sex in education. Because the districts did not agree by Tuesday to take remedial action detailed in Trainor’s letters, the department said, Trainor will not certify that they are in compliance with federal civil rights law, making them ineligible for the grants.
Millions in grants at stake
Fairfax County schools will lose $3.4 million in Magnet School Assistance Program funding in the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. About $5.8 million will be withheld from Chicago schools and community school districts in New York City will lose about $15 million, according to the Education Department.
“The Department will not rubber-stamp civil rights compliance for New York, Chicago, and Fairfax while they blatantly discriminate against students based on race and sex,” department spokesperson Julie Hartman said via email. “These are public schools, funded by hardworking American families, and parents have every right to expect an excellent education—not ideological indoctrination masquerading as `inclusive’ policy.'”
Additional policies under scrutiny
Along with restricting access to restrooms and locker rooms, the department also demanded that New York City and Chicago schools issue public statements saying they will not allow males to compete in female athletic programs.
Chicago schools were further told to abolish a program that provides remedial academic resources to Black students, which Trainor labeled “textbook racial discrimination.” School officials estimated a total of about $8 million would be lost for initiatives that have expanded staffing, technology and enrichment opportunities like field trips and after-school programming.
Chicago education officials faulted the department for failing to provide evidence that its students were being harmed and said it was acting outside of its own procedures for complaints.
“Our mission, programs, and policies not only meet our obligation to students, but they also plainly comply with the law,” acting general counsel Elizabeth Barton said in the district’s response to Trainor.
The Education Department denied requests from New York City and Chicago for more time to respond to the demands. It was unclear whether Fairfax County schools made such a request. The district did not respond to requests for information.
In his letter to New York City schools, Trainor cited several of the district’s policies, including one saying that transgender students cannot be required to use an alternative facility, such as a single-occupancy bathroom, instead of a regular restroom. That means trans students “are given unqualified access to female intimate spaces,” he wrote.
Each of the districts was told they would lose funding unless they agreed to rescind policies that violate Title IX and adopt “biology-based definitions of the words male and female” in practices relating to Title IX.
“Cutting this funding — which invests in specialized curricula, afterschool education, and summer learning — harms not only the approximately 8,500 students this program currently benefits, but all of our students from underserved communities,” New York City schools said in a statement. “If the federal government pulls this funding, that means canceled courses and shrinking enrichment. That’s a consequence our city can’t afford and our students don’t deserve.”
Attention from New York City mayoral candidates
The topic came up on the campaign trail in New York City’s contentious mayoral election in recent days.
Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, raised eyebrows when he said at an unrelated news conference that he would like to look into changing the policy if it “is allowing boys and girls to use the same facility at the same time.” The remarks came days after the Trump administration’s letter, though he has insisted they were unrelated.
Adams’ comments were swiftly condemned by the race’s Democratic nominee, Zohran Mamdani, who called them “completely at odds with the values of our city.”
Adams said this week that he would like to change the city’s policy — but also that he did not have the power. The state’s human rights law also allows students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.
On Wednesday, Adams’ office said the administration was reviewing options, including litigation.
“The federal government is threatening to defund our children’s education as a tool to change policies it doesn’t like,” City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus said in a statement. “While Mayor Adams may not agree with every rule or policy, we will always stand up to protect critical resources for our city’s 1 million students.”
Pope Leo XIV met Monday with one of the most prominent advocates for greater LGBTQ inclusion in the Catholic Church and encouraged his ministry, just days before a planned Holy Year pilgrimage of LGBTQ Catholics to the Vatican.
The Rev. James Martin, a New York-based Jesuit author and editor, said Leo told him he intended to continue Pope Francis’ policy of LGBTQ acceptance in the church and encouraged him to keep up his advocacy.
“I heard the same message from Pope Leo that I heard from Pope Francis, which is the desire to welcome all people, including LGBTQ people,” Martin told The Associated Press after the audience. “It was wonderful. It was very consoling and very encouraging and frankly a lot of fun.”
Rev. James Martin shows a commemorative photograph of Pope Leo XIV, outside St. Peter’s Square in Rome, on Monday.Maria Selene Clemente / AP
The meeting, which lasted about a half-hour, was officially announced by the Vatican in a sign that Leo wanted it made public.
The audience was significant because it showed a strong sign of continuity with Francis, who more than any of Leo’s predecessors worked to make the Catholic Church a more welcoming place for LGBTQ Catholics. From his 2013 quip, “Who am I to judge?” about a purportedly gay priest, to his decision to allow priests to bless same-sex couples, Francis distinguished himself with his message of welcome.
During his 12-year papacy from 2013 to 2025, Francis met on several occasions with Martin and named him an adviser in the Vatican’s communications department and a member of his big multi-year meeting on the future of the church. Still, Francis never changed church teaching saying homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”
Leo’s position on LGBTQ Catholics had been something of a question. Soon after he was elected in May, remarks surfaced from 2012 in which the future pope, then known as the Rev. Robert Prevost, criticized the “homosexual lifestyle” and the role of mass media in promoting acceptance of same-sex relationships that conflicted with Catholic doctrine.
When he became a cardinal in 2023, Catholic News Service asked Prevost if his views had changed. He acknowledged Francis’ call for a more inclusive church, saying Francis “made it very clear that he doesn’t want people to be excluded simply on the basis of choices that they make, whether it be lifestyle, work, way to dress, or whatever.”
Prevost then underlined that doctrine had not changed.
“But we are looking to be more welcoming and more open and to say all people are welcome in the church,” he said.
Martin, who knew Prevost from their time working together in the synod on the church’s future, said he wasn’t worried about Leo’s views given Martin always had found him to be “a very open, welcoming, inclusive person.”
“But it’s wonderful to hear this continuation,” Martin said, adding that Leo told him his priorities are to work for peace and unity, citing in particular the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Myanmar.
“But he also wanted to remind people that this is a church for ‘todos, todos, totos,”‘ Martin said, quoting Francis’ famous line in Spanish about how the church is open to everyone, todos.
Martin helped found Outreach, a ministry promoting LGBTQ acceptance, which will participate in a big Holy Year pilgrimage Friday and Saturday sponsored by Italian LGBTQ Catholic group “Jonathan’s Tent.” Significantly, the pilgrimage of about 1,200 people includes a Mass at the Jesuit church in Rome celebrated by the second-highest member of the Italian bishop’s conference.
The pilgrimage is not officially sponsored by the Vatican, but is listed on the Vatican’s calendar of Holy Year events. Vatican officials say such a listing doesn’t signify endorsement, but is merely a logistical help to those groups that wish to organize pilgrimages and walk through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica.
But the pilgrimage and Martin’s audience nevertheless send a signal that is consistent with church teaching “that Jesus reaches out to people on the margins,” Martin said.
The message he received from Leo was “that if people were happy with Pope Francis’ approach to LGBTQ Catholics, they’re going to be happy with Pope Leo’s approach. And he asked me to continue what I’m doing, which was very encouraging,” Martin said.
The U.S. Education Department said Thursday that Denver Public Schools violated Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination in education by creating all-gender bathrooms and allowing students to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.
The finding followed an unprecedented probe of Denver’s East High School that marked a sharp departure from the department’s investigations under former Democratic President Joe Biden. It’s part of a push by President Donald Trump’s Republican administration against local and state policies that make allowances for transgender students.
The investigation in Denver began after the school district converted a girl’s restroom into an all-gender restroom while leaving another bathroom on the same floor exclusive to boys in January. The school district has said that was done as a result of a student-led process and the bathroom had 12-foot (3.6-meter) tall partitions for privacy and security.
The school district later added a second all-gender restroom on the same floor which it said was meant to address concerns of unfairness. At the time it said that students would also continue to have access to gender-specific restrooms and single-stall, all-gender bathrooms.
The Education Department said it offered the school district a chance to voluntarily make changes, including converting multi-stall, all-gender bathrooms back to ones designated by gender, within 10 days or risk unspecified enforcement action.
It also wants the district to use biology-based definitions for the words “male” and “female” in all policies and practices related to Title IX and to rescind any policies or guidance allowing students to use bathrooms based on their gender identity rather than their biological sex.
“Denver is free to endorse a self-defeating gender ideology, but it is not free to accept federal taxpayer funds and harm its students in violation of Title IX,” Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of the department’s Office for Civil Rights, said in a news release.
Denver Public Schools officials said they had received the results of the investigation and were “determining our next steps.”
The Trump administration has launched about two dozen investigations of transgender policies in schools, including access to sports, locker rooms and bathrooms, according to data compiled by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news organization. Roughly half of the investigations focus at least in part on who gets to use bathrooms in some K-12 school districts in Virginia, Kansas, Washington state and Colorado.
Trump signed an executive order in February to block trans girls from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Supporters said the move restored fairness in athletic competitions, but opponents called it an attack on transgender youth.
Federal officials in June determined that California’s Department of Education violated civil rights law by allowing transgender girls to compete on girls sports teams. Officials under Trump also have sued Maine over the participation of transgender athletes in girl’s sports and last month launched an investigation into Oregon’s Department of Education, following a complaint from a conservative group about transgender girls on girls sports teams.
An Islamic court in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province on Monday sentenced two men to public caning, 80 times each, after Islamic religious police caught them engaged in what the court deemed were sexual acts: hugging and kissing.
The trial at the Islamic Shariah District Court in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, was held behind closed doors. Judges have the authority to limit public access in such a case and open it only for the verdict.
The two men, aged 20 and 21, were arrested in April after residents saw them entering the same bathroom at Taman Sari city park and reported it to police patrolling the area. The police broke into the toilet and caught the men kissing and hugging, which the court considered to be a sexual act.
The lead judge, Rokhmadi M. Hum, said the two college students were “legally and convincingly” proven to have violated Islamic law by committing acts that lead to gay sexual relations. The court didn’t publicly identify the men.
Prosecutors previously sought 85 strokes of the cane for each, but the three-judge panel decided on what they described as lenient punishment because the men were outstanding students who were polite in court, cooperated with authorities and had no previous convictions.
The judges also ordered the time they have served to be deducted from their sentence. It means the number of lashes will be reduced by four as they have been detained for four months.
The prosecutor, Alfian, who like many Indonesians uses only a single name, said he was not satisfied with the lighter sentence. But he said he will not appeal.
Aceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia allowed to observe a version of Islamic law. It allows up to 100 lashes for morality offenses including gay sex. Caning is also punishment for adultery, gambling, drinking and for women who wear tight clothes and men who skip Friday prayers.
Indonesia’s secular central government granted Aceh the right to implement the law in 2006 as part of a peace deal to end a separatist war. Aceh implemented an expansion in 2015 that extended the law to non-Muslims, who account for about 1% of the province’s population.
Human rights groups have criticized the law, saying it violates international treaties signed by Indonesia protecting the rights of minorities. Indonesia’s national criminal code doesn’t regulate homosexuality.
Monday’s verdict was the fifth time that Aceh has sentenced people to public caning for homosexuality since the Islamic law was implemented.
In February, the same court sentenced two men to public caning up to 85 times for gay sex after neighborhood vigilantes in Banda Aceh suspected them of being gay and broke into their rented room to catch them naked and hugging each other.
The federal agency responsible for enforcing laws against workplace discrimination will allow some complaints filed by transgender workers to move forward, shifting course from earlier guidance that indefinitely stalled all such cases, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press.
The email was sent earlier this month to leaders of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with the subject line “Hot Topics,” in which Thomas Colclough, director of the agency’s Office of Field Programs, announced that if new transgender worker complaints involve “hiring, discharge or promotion, you are clear to continue processing these charges.”
But even those cases will still be subject to higher scrutiny than other types of workplace discrimination cases, requiring approval from President Donald Trump’s appointed acting agency head Andrea Lucas, who has said that one of her priorities would be “defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights.”
Since Trump regained office in January, the EEOC has moved away from its prior interpretation of civil rights law, marking a stark contrast to a decade ago when the agency issued a landmark finding that a transgender civilian employee of the U.S. Army had been discriminated against because her employer refused to use her preferred pronouns or allow her to use bathrooms based on her gender identity.
Under Lucas’s leadership, the EEOC has dropped several lawsuits on behalf of transgender workers. Lucas defended that decision during her June 18 Senate committee confirmation hearing in order to comply with the president’s executive order declaring two unchangeable sexes.
However, she acknowledged that a 2020 Supreme Court ruling — Bostock v. Clayton County — “did clearly hold that discriminating against someone on the basis of sex included firing an individual who is transgender or based on their sexual orientation.”
Colclough acknowledged in his July 1 email that the EEOC will consider transgender discrimination complaints that “fall squarely under” the Supreme Court’s ruling, such as cases involving hiring, firing and promotion. The email backtracked on an earlier policy, communicated verbally, that de-prioritized all transgender cases.
The EEOC declined to comment on the specifics of its latest policy, saying: “Under federal law, charge inquiries and charges of discrimination made to the EEOC are confidential. Pursuant to Title VII and as statutorily required, the EEOC is, has been, and will continue to accept and investigate charges on all bases protected by law, and to serve those charges to the relevant employer.”
But even the cases that the EEOC is willing to consider under Bostock must still be reviewed by a senior attorney advisor, and then sent to Lucas for final approval.
This heightened review process is not typical for other discrimination charges and reflects the agency’s increased oversight for gender identity cases, former EEOC commissioner Chai Feldblum told The AP in a Monday phone interview.
“It is a slight improvement because it will allow certain claims of discrimination to proceed,” Feldblum said of the new policy. “But overall it does not fix a horrific and legally improper situation currently occurring at the EEOC.”
Colclough’s email did not clarify how long the review process might take, or whether cases that include additional claims, such as harassment or retaliation, would be eligible to proceed, and the EEOC declined to address those questions.
“This is not the EEOC being clear to either its own staff or to the public what charges are going to be processed,” Feldblum said. “This is not a panacea.”
One of the most complex current issues in sports can be traced back to a track meet in Germany in 2009, when an unknown 18-year-old from South Africa blew away a field of the best female runners on the planet to win the world title. The teenager was hardly out of breath when she flexed her muscles at the end of it.
What quickly became clear is that sports faced an unprecedented dilemma with the arrival of Caster Semenya.
Now a two-time Olympic and three-time world champion in the 800 meters, the 34-year-old Semenya has been banned from competing in her favored event since 2019 by a set of rules that were crafted by track authorities because of her dominance.
They say her natural testosterone level is much higher than the typical female range and should be medically reduced for her to compete fairly against other women.
Semenya has refused to artificially alter her hormones and challenged the rules claiming discrimination at the Court of Arbitration for Sport court in Switzerland, then the Swiss Supreme Court and now the European Court of Human Rights.
Semenya answers reporters with lawyers Gregory Nott, left, and Shona Jolly after she won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, on Thursday.Antonin Utz / AP
A ruling Thursday by the highest chamber of the European court — Semenya’s last legal avenue after losing at the other two — found that she was denied a fair hearing at the Swiss Supreme Court.
It kept alive Semenya’s case and reignited a yearslong battle involving individual rights on one hand and the perception of fairness in sports on the other, with implications across the sporting world.
A complex issue
Semenya is not transgender and her case has sometimes been inaccurately conflated with that of transgender athletes. She was assigned female at birth, raised as a girl and has always identified as female.
After years of secrecy because of medical confidentiality, it was made public in 2018 that she has one of a number of conditions known as differences of sex development, or DSDs. They are sometimes known as intersex conditions. Semenya was born with the typical male XY chromosome pattern and female physical traits. Her condition leads to her having testosterone levels that are higher than the typical female range.
World Athletics, the track governing body, says that gives her an unfair, male-like advantage when racing against other women because of testosterone’s link to muscle mass and cardiovascular performance. It says Semenya and a relatively small number of other DSD athletes who emerged after her must suppress their testosterone to below a specific level to compete in women’s competitions.
The case has transcended sports and reached Europe’s top rights court largely because of its core dispute: Semenya says the sports rules restrict the rights she has always known as a woman in every other facet of life and mean she can’t practice her profession. World Athletics has asserted that Semenya is “biologically male.”
How the rules work
Track and field’s regulations depend on the conclusion that higher testosterone gives rise to an athletic advantage, though that has been challenged in just one of the many complicated details of Semenya’s case.
To follow the rules, DSD athletes must suppress their testosterone to below a threshold that World Athletics says will put them in the typical female range. Athletes do that by taking daily contraceptive pills or using hormone-blocking injections and it’s checked through regular blood tests.
Semenya during a heat in the women’s 5000-meter run at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Ore., in 2022.Ashley Landis / AP file
Track first introduced a version of its testosterone regulations in 2011 in response to Semenya and has made them stricter over the years. The current rules require athletes affected to reduce their testosterone for at least two years before competing and throughout competitions, effectively meaning elite DSD runners would be constantly on medication to stay eligible for the biggest events like the Olympics and world championships.
That has troubled medical experts and ethicists, who have questioned the “off-label” use of birth control pills for the purpose of sports eligibility.
Semenya is not alone
While Semenya is the only athlete currently challenging the regulations, three other women who have won Olympic medals — Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi, Margaret Wambui of Kenya and Christine Mboma of Namibia — have also been sidelined by the rules.
The issue came to a head at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when Semenya, Niyonsaba and Wambui won the gold, silver and bronze medals in the 800 meters when the rules were temporarily suspended. Supporters of the ban cited that result as evidence they had an insurmountable advantage over other women.
World Athletics is now considering a total ban on DSD athletes like Semenya. Its president, Sebastian Coe, said in 2023 that up to 13 women in elite track and field fell under the rules without naming them.
What Thursday’s decision means
Track’s DSD rules became a blueprint for other sports like swimming, another high-profile Olympic code that has regulations. Soccer is considering testosterone rules in women’s competitions.
Sex eligibility is a burning issue for the International Olympic Committee and new president, Kirsty Coventry, who was elected in March. It was brought into urgent focus for the IOC after a sex eligibility scandal erupted at last year’s Paris Olympics over female boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan.
Most sports will watch the direction of Semenya’s case closely as it is sent back to the Swiss Supreme Court, and possibly to sport’s highest court, even though that could take years. The ultimate outcome — whether a victory for Semenya or for World Athletics — would set a definitive precedent for sports because there has never been a case like it.
“I hated my body,” the nonbinary 16-year-old said. “I hated looking at it.”
When therapy didn’t help, Pitchenik, who uses the pronoun they, started going to the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the country’s biggest public provider of gender-affirming care for children and teens. It changed their life.
But in response to the Trump administration’s threat to cut federal funds to places that offer gender-affirming care to minors, the center will be closing its doors July 22. Pitchenik has been among the scores of protesters who have demonstrated regularly outside the hospital to keep it open.
Sage Sol Pitchenik in Santa Clarita, Calif., on Monday.Jae C. Hong / AP
“Trans kids are done being quiet. Trans kids are done being polite, and trans kids are done begging for the bare minimum, begging for the chance to grow up, to have a future, to be loved by others when sometimes we can’t even love ourselves,” Pitchenik said, prompting cheers from dozens of protesters during a recent demonstration.
They went to the center for six years.
“There’s a lot of bigotry and just hate all around, and having somebody who is trained specifically to speak with you, because there’s not a lot of people that know what it’s like, it meant the world,” they told The Associated Press.
The center’s legacy
In operation for three decades, the facility is among the longest-running trans youth centers in the country and has served thousands of young people on public insurance.
Patients who haven’t gone through puberty yet receive counseling, which continues throughout the care process. For some patients, the next step is puberty blockers; for others, it’s also hormone replacement therapy. Surgeries are rarely offered to minors.
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” said Pitchenik, who received hormone blockers after a lengthy process. “I learned how to not only survive but how to thrive in my own body because of the lifesaving health care provided to me right here at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.”
Many families are now scrambling to find care among a patchwork of private and public providers that are already stretched thin. It’s not just patient care, but research development that’s ending.
“It is a disappointment to see this abrupt closure disrupting the care that trans youth receive. But it’s also a stain on their legacy,” said Maria Do, community mobilization manager at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. “I think it showcases that they’re quick to abandon our most vulnerable members.”
Maria Do, community mobilization manager at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, outside Children’s Hospital Los Angeles on Thursday.Jae C. Hong / AP
The closure comes weeks after the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, amid other efforts by the federal government to regulate the lives of transgender people.
The hospital initially backed off its plans to close after it announced them in February, spurring demonstrations, but later doubled back.
The center said in a statement that “despite this deeply held commitment to supporting LA’s gender-diverse community, the hospital has been left with no viable path forward” to stay open.
“Center team members were heartbroken to learn of the decision from hospital leaders, who emphasized that it was not made lightly, but followed a thorough legal and financial assessment of the increasingly severe impacts of recent administrative actions and proposed policies,” the statement said.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has warned that by closing the center, the hospital is violating state antidiscrimination laws, but his office hasn’t taken any further actions. Bonta and attorney generals from 22 other states sued the Trump administration over the executive order in February.
“The Trump administration’s relentless assault on transgender adolescents is nothing short of an all-out war to strip away LGBTQ+ rights,” Bonta told the AP in an email. “The Administration’s harmful attacks are hurting California’s transgender community by seeking to scare doctors and hospitals from providing nondiscriminatory healthcare. The bottom line is: This care remains legal in California.”
LGBTQ protesters and health care workers offer visibility
Still wearing scrubs, Jack Brenner, joined protesters after a long shift as a nurse in the hospital’s emergency room, addressing the crowd with a megaphone while choking back tears.
“Our visibility is so important for our youth,” Brenner said, looking out at a cluster of protesters raising signs and waving trans pride flags. “To see that there is a future, and that there is a way to grow up and to be your authentic self.”
Jack Brenner, an emergency room nurse at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, on Thursday.Jae C. Hong / AP
Brenner, who uses the pronoun they, didn’t see people who looked like them growing up or come to understand what being trans meant until their mid-20s.
“It’s something I definitely didn’t have a language for when I was a kid, and I didn’t know what the source of my pain and suffering was, and now looking back, so many things are sliding into place,” Brenner said. “I’m realizing how much gender dysphoria was a source of my pain.”
Trans children and teens are at increased risk of death by suicide, according to a 2024 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Brenner described encountering young patients in the emergency room who are trans or otherwise on the gender-nonconforming spectrum and “at the peak of a mental health crisis.” Brenner wears a lanyard teeming with colorful pins emblazoned with the words “they/them” to signal their gender identity.
Jack Brenner shows their lanyard decorated with pronoun pins and buttons.Jae C. Hong / AP
“I see the change in kids’ eyes, little glints of recognition, that I am a trans adult and that there is a future,” Brenner said. “I’ve seen kids light up when they recognize something of themselves in me. And that is so meaningful that I can provide that.”
Beth Hossfeld, a marriage and family therapist, and a grandmother to an 11- and 13-year-old who received care at the center, called the closure “patient abandonment.”
“It’s a political decision, not a medical one, and that’s disturbing to me,” she said.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for the state to institute a ban on conversion therapy in a ruling that gives the governor more power over how state laws are enacted.
The court ruled that a Republican-controlled legislative committee’s rejection of a state agency rule that would ban the practice of conversion therapy for LGBTQ people was unconstitutional. The decision, which has a broad impact far beyond the conversion therapy issue, takes power away from the Legislature to block the enactment of rules by the governor’s office that carry the force of law.
The 4-3 ruling from the liberal-controlled court comes amid the national battle over LGBTQ+ rights. It is also part of a broader effort by the Democratic governor, who has vetoed Republican bills targeting transgender high school athletes, to rein in the power of the GOP-controlled Legislature.
What is conversion therapy?
What is known as conversion therapy is the scientifically discredited practice of using therapy to “convert” LGBTQ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.
The practice has been banned in 23 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ rights think tank. It is also banned in more than a dozen communities across Wisconsin. Since April 2024, the Wisconsin professional licensing board for therapists, counselors and social workers has labeled conversion therapy as unprofessional conduct.
Advocates seeking to ban the practice want to forbid mental health professionals in the state from counseling clients with the goal of changing their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in March to hear a Colorado case about whether state and local governments can enforce laws banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children.
What is happening in Wisconsin?
The provision barring conversion therapy in Wisconsin has been blocked twice by the Legislature’s powerful Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules — a Republican-controlled panel in charge of approving state agency regulations.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling means the conversion therapy ban can be enacted. The court ruled that the legislative committee has been overreaching its authority in blocking a variety of other state regulations during Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration.
The lawsuit brought by Evers targeted two votes by the joint committee. One deals with the Department of Safety and Professional Services’ conversion therapy ban. The other vote blocked an update to the state’s commercial building standards.
Republicans who supported suspending the conversion therapy ban have insisted the issue isn’t the policy itself, but whether the licensing board had the authority to take the action it did.
Evers has been trying since 2020 to get the ban enacted, but the Legislature has stopped it from going into effect.
Evers and legislative leaders did not immediately respond to messages seeking reaction to the ruling.
Ruling weakens legislative power
The Legislature’s attorney argued that decades of precedent backed up their argument, including a 1992 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling upholding the Legislature’s right to suspend state agency rules.
Evers argued that by blocking the rule, the legislative committee is taking over powers that the state constitution assigns to the governor and exercising an unconstitutional “legislative veto.”
The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed with Evers.
The court found that the Legislature was violating the state constitution’s requirement that any laws pass both houses of the Legislature and be presented to the governor.
Instead, in this case the Legislature was illegally taking “action that alters the legal rights and duties of the executive branch and the people of Wisconsin,” Chief Justice Jill Karofsky wrote for the majority. She was joined by the court’s three other liberal justices.
Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, in a dissent, said the court’s ruling is “devoid of legal analysis and raises more questions than it answers.”
Hagedorn argued for a more narrow ruling that would have only declared unconstitutional the legislative committee’s indefinite objection to a building code rule.
Fellow conservative justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley also dissented, saying the ruling shifts too much power to the executive branch and holds the Legislature to a higher legal standard.
Bradley said the ruling “lets the executive branch exercise lawmaking power unfettered and unchecked.”
The issue goes beyond conversion therapy
The conversion therapy ban is one of several rules that have been blocked by the legislative committee. Others pertain to environmental regulations, vaccine requirements and public health protections.
Environmental groups hailed the ruling.
The decision will prevent a small number of lawmakers from blocking the enactment of environmental protections passed by the Legislature and signed into law, said Wilkin Gibart, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates.
The court previously sided with Evers in one issue brought in the lawsuit, ruling 6-1 last year that another legislative committee was illegally preventing the state Department of Natural Resources from funding grants to local governments and nongovernmental organizations for environmental projects under the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.
The University of Pennsylvania has agreed to ban transgender women from its women’s sports teams to resolve a federal civil rights case that found the school violated the rights of female athletes.
The U.S. Education Department announced the voluntary agreement Tuesday. The case focused on Lia Thomas, the transgender swimmer who last competed for the Ivy League school in Philadelphia in 2022, when she became the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title.
It’s part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to remove transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.
Under the agreement, Penn agreed to restore all individual Division I swimming records and titles to female athletes who lost out to Thomas, the Education Department said. Penn also agreed to send a personalized apology letter to each of those swimmers.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Thomas would be stripped of her awards and honors at Penn.
The university must also announce that it “will not allow males to compete in female athletic programs” and it must adopt “biology-based” definitions of male and female, the department said.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon called it a victory for women and girls.
“The Department commends UPenn for rectifying its past harms against women and girls, and we will continue to fight relentlessly to restore Title IX’s proper application and enforce it to the fullest extent of the law,” McMahon said in a statement.
The Education Department opened its investigation in February and concluded in April that Penn had violated Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding sex discrimination in education. Such findings have almost always been resolved through voluntary agreements. If Penn had fought the finding, the department could have moved to refer the case to the Justice Department or pursued a separate process to cut the school’s federal funding.
In February, the Education Department asked the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations, or NFSHSA, to restore titles, awards and records it says have been “misappropriated by biological males competing in female categories.”
The most obvious target at the college level was in women’s swimming, where Thomas won the national title in the 500-yard freestyle in 2022.
The NCAA has updated its record books when recruiting and other violations have stripped titles from certain schools, but the organization, like the NFSHSA, has not responded to the federal government’s request. Determining which events had a transgender athlete participating years later would be challenging.
