Arizona’s Republican governor signed a series of bills Wednesday targeting abortion and transgender rights, joining a growing list of GOP-led states pursuing a conservative social agenda.
The measures signed by Gov. Doug Ducey will outlaw abortion after 15 weeks if the U.S. Supreme Court allows it, prohibit gender confirmation surgery for minors and ban transgender girls from playing on girls sports teams.
Bills targeting abortion and transgender rights have been popular with the conservative base in states where Republicans dominate but could be politically risky in a battleground state where Democrats have made significant inroads.
The Arizona abortion legislation mirrors a Mississippi law now being considered by the nation’s high court. The bill explicitly says it does not overrule a state law in place for more than 100 years that would ban abortion outright if the Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that enshrined the right to abortion in law.
“In Arizona, we know there is immeasurable value in every life — including preborn life,” Ducey said in a signing letter. “I believe it is each state’s responsibility to protect them.”
Ducey is an abortion opponent who has signed every piece of anti-abortion legislation that has reached his desk since he took office in 2015. He said late last year that he hoped the Supreme Court overturns the Roe decision.
Florida lawmakers passed a similar 15-week abortion ban early this month that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign.
Other states are considering similar bans or passing versions of a ban enacted in Texas last year that bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy that the Supreme Court has refused to block.
The president of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona called the 15-week ban just the latest in a series of “unrelenting attacks” on a woman’s right to choose by Arizona Republicans.
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Meanwhile, Arizona joins at least a dozen other states with limits on sports participation for trans girls and becomes the third state to try and limit health care options for transgender teens.
Until two years ago, no state had passed a law regulating gender-designated youth sports. But the issue has become front and center in Republican-led statehouses since Idaho lawmakers passed the nation’s first sports participation law in 2020. That law is now blocked in court, along with another in West Virginia.
Republicans have said blocking transgender athletes from girls sports teams would protect the integrity of women’s sports, claiming that trans athletes would have an advantage. Ducey echoed that sentiment in his signing statement.
“Every young Arizona athlete should have the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities that give them a sense of belonging and allow them to grow and thrive,” Ducey said.
Many point to the transgender collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas, who won an individual title at the NCAA Women’s Division I Swimming and Diving Championship last week.
But there are few trans athletes in Arizona schools. Since 2017, about 16 trans athletes have received waivers to play on teams that align with their gender identities out of about 170,000 high school athletes in the state, according to the Arizona Interscholastic Association.
Critics said the legislation dehumanizes trans youth to address an issue that hasn’t been a problem. They said decisions about health care should be left to trans children, their parents and their health care providers.
“We’re talking about legislating bullying against children who are already struggling just to get by,” Democratic Rep. Kelli Butler said during the House debate on the sports bill last week.
The Arizona Legislature passed bills Thursday to prohibit gender reassignment surgery for minors and ban transgender athletes from playing on girls sports teams, joining a growing list of Republican-controlled states attempting to restrict transgender rights as they gain more visibility in culture and society.
Republican Gov. Doug Ducey has not said whether he will sign either bill. Two GOP governors this week bucked conservatives in their party and vetoed bills in Indiana and Utah requiring trans girls to play on boys sports teams.
Republicans have said blocking transgender players from girls sports teams would protect the integrity of women’s sports, fearing that trans athletes would have an advantage.
Many point to the transgender collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas, who won an individual title at the NCAA Women’s Division I Swimming and Diving Championship last week.
But there are few trans athletes in Arizona schools. Since 2017, about 16 trans athletes have received waivers to play on teams that align with their gender identities out of about 170,000 school-based athletes in the state, according to the Arizona Interscholastic Association.
“This bill to me is all about biology,” said Republican Rep. Shawnna Bolick, who said she played on a coed team in the 1980s but could not have made the high school boys team. “In my opinion, its unfair to allow biological males to compete with biological girls sports.”
Critics said the legislation dehumanizes trans youth to address an issue that hasn’t been a problem.
“We’re talking about legislating bullying against children who are already struggling just to get by,” said Democratic Rep. Kelli Butler. fighting back tears.
Until two years ago, no state had passed a law regulating gender-designated youth sports. But the issue has become front-and-center in Republican-led statehouses since Idaho lawmakers passed the nation’s first sports participation law in 2020. It’s now blocked in court, along with another in West Virginia.
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“This bill is creating a pointless and harmful solution to a non-existent issue,” Skyler Morrison, a 13-year-old transgender girl, told lawmakers during a committee hearing earlier this month. “It’s obvious this bill is just an excuse to discriminate against transgender girls.”
Republicans around the country have leaned into culture war issues including transgender rights. The debate and vote on the transgender sports legislation came the same morning the House considered and passed a ban on abortions after 15-week gestation. Republicans said little during debates on all three bills.
Arizona is one of 20 states that have considered legislation to restrict gender-affirming health care. The bill originally would have banned all gender-affirming care, including hormone therapies and puberty blockers, but was scaled back in the Senate.
Similar legislation passed the Idaho House earlier this month but it died in the Senate amid concerns from some Republicans about restricting parental rights.
Supporters of the Arizona bill said it would prevent children from making permanent decisions that they might later come to regret. Republican Rep. John Kavanagh compared the vote to the Legislature’s unanimous decision in years past to ban genital mutilation.
“We should stand the same way today because this is mutilation of children,” Kavanagh said. “It is irreversible. It is horrific.”
Critics said the decision should be left to parents, their children and the health care team caring for them. They said operations are performed only after extensive care and therapy.
“We’re talking about our kids, who are already going to be taking the proper steps with their parents to be able to be who they are,” said Democratic Rep. Andres Cano.
The Supreme Court says it won’t review the case of a Seattle-based Christian organization that was sued after declining to hire a bisexual lawyer who applied for a job. A lower court let the case go forward, and the high court said Monday it wouldn’t intervene.
Two justices, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, agreed with the decision not to hear the case at this stage but said that “the day may soon come” when the court needs to confront the issue the case presents.
The case the high court declined to hear involves Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. In addition to providing food and shelter to the homeless the organization offers addiction recovery, job placement and legal services. In 2016 it was looking for an attorney to help staff its legal-aid clinic.
One of the applicants was Matthew Woods, who had volunteered at the clinic for more than three years. Woods identifies as bisexual and was in a same-sex relationship. He was told before he applied that his application would be rejected because the organization’s “code of conduct excludes homosexual activity.” Woods sued, arguing that the organization violated state law by discriminating against him on the basis of his sexual orientation.
A state trial court judge ruled for Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission and dismissed Woods’ lawsuit. The judge ruled that the organization is exempt from the state’s anti-discrimination law. But the Washington Supreme Court reversed the decision and let the lawsuit go forward.
The Supreme Court does already have a different high-profile dispute involving a clash between religion and the rights of LGBTQ people on its docket. That dispute involves a Colorado web designer who says her religious beliefs prevent her from offering wedding website designs to gay couples. That case is expected to be argued in the fall.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law on Tuesday to make abortions cheaper for people on private insurance plans, the first of more than a dozen bills the state’s Democratic leaders plan to pass this year to prepare for a potential U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could overturn Roe v. Wade.
The new conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that banned states from outlawing abortion.
If they do, at least 26 states are likely to either ban abortion outright or severely limit access, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that supports abortion rights.
That would force many women to travel to other states to get abortions, prompting Democratic-led states like California to propose and pass new laws to prepare for them.
Last week, Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a law aimed at banning legal action against people who aid or receive an abortion, a measure responding to the Texas law that lets people sue abortion providers or those who assist them.
Oregon lawmakers included $15 million in their state budget to help pay for people to travel to the state to get abortions.
California has a similar bill, one of 14 proposals aimed at expanding and protecting access to abortion in the nation’s most populous state. The bills were inspired by a report from the Future of Abortion Council, a group Newsom convened last year to advise him about how to respond if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
“We’re looking at 26 states that will introduce some sort of ban and restriction on abortion, so you have the other half of the country that will need to prepare for how we take care of those patients,” said Jodi Hicks, CEO and President of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. “We’re all imagining and trying to prepare correctly for what that impact will be.”
California already requires health insurance companies to cover abortions. But insurers often charge things like co-pays and deductibles that can add an average of $543 to the cost of a medication abortion and $887 to the cost of a procedural abortion, according to an analysis by the California Health Benefits Review Program.
The law Newsom signed on Tuesday eliminates those fees. While the law will make abortions cheaper, it will also slightly increase monthly premiums for patients and their employers.
But the savings from eliminating the fees will be greater than the increased premiums, according to an analysis by the California Health Benefits Review Program.
The law, authored by state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, makes California the fourth state to ban the fees — joining Illinois, New York and Oregon.
“As states across the country attempt to move us backwards by restricting fundamental reproductive rights, California continues to protect and advance reproductive freedom for all,” Newsom said.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide this summer whether to uphold a law in Mississippi that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. During a public hearing on the case last year, a majority of justices indicated they were willing to uphold the law and even overturn Roe v. Wade.
California could provide legal refuge to displaced transgender youth and their families under a proposal announced Thursday that joins a growing list of initiatives from the nation’s most populous state aimed at counterbalancing actions in Texas and other conservative places.
Democratic state lawmakers said they will introduce legislation to offer California as a safe haven for parents in other states who risk having their transgender children taken away or from being criminally prosecuted for supporting their children’s access to gender-affirming procedures and other health care.
The measure is a response to moves in several Republican-dominated states and particularly Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott has directed state agencies to consider removing transgender children from their families and placing them in foster care. A Texas judge last week temporarily blocked that effort, although the state is appealing.
California Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener said his bill would ensure that “California is a place of refuge for transgender children and their parents as a wave of criminalization sweeps through Texas and other states.”
“They have a safe place to go if they’re threatened with prosecution,” he added. “California will not be a party to this new wave of deadly LGBTQ criminalization.”
Jonathan Keller, president of the conservative California Family Council, responded to the proposal by citing the story of a woman who said last week that her 16-year-old daughter killed herself while receiving gender-affirming treatment against her mother’s wishes.
The mother spoke during a forum by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based think tank, entitled Protecting Our Children: How Radical Gender Ideology is Taking Over Public Schools & Harming Kids.
“California should not be complicit in the sterilization and permanent disfigurement of American’s children,” Keller said.
The bill to provide refuge to transgender youth and their families is the latest effort by California officials to counter moves on generally liberal vs. conservative issues like abortion and gun control in other states.
Wiener’s approach is similar to the provisions in another pending California bill responding to efforts in other states to restrict abortions.
It would bar the enforcement of civil judgments against doctors who perform abortions on patients from other states. It’s among several measures designed to make California a sanctuary for people seeking or providing abortions.
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In a spinoff move, California is also advancing efforts to target illicit assault-style weapons with legislation patterned on Texas’ attempt to restrict abortions, by allowing private citizens to take legal action against gunmakers.
Like the abortion bill, the transgender bill would reject any out-of-state court judgments removing transgender children from their parents’ custody because they allowed their children to receive gender-affirming healthcare.
Because the judgments in other states wouldn’t be enforced in California, families could move to California to avoid having their children taken away from them.
It would also prohibit California officials from complying with out-of-state subpoenas seeking medical or related information about people who travel to California for gender-affirming care. To be blocked, the subpoena would have to be related to attempts to file criminal charges or remove children from their homes for receiving gender-affirming care.
The measure would also make it California’s policy that any out-of-state criminal arrest warrants based on an alleged violation of another state’s law against receiving gender-affirming care would be the lowest priority for law enforcement in California.
“We will not allow other states to hunt our community within California’s borders,” said Tami Martin, legislative director at Equality California, which says it is the largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization in the U.S. Her organization is co-sponsoring the bill with Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.
Arkansas last year became the first state to pass a law prohibiting gender-confirming treatments for minors, and Tennessee has approved a similar measure.
Idaho legislators last week introduced legislation that would make it a felony for parents to allow their children to obtain gender-affirming care, though the measure failed.
Advocates of California’s measure said there also are legislative efforts to restrict gender-affirming care pending in Alabama, Arizona and Louisiana.
Supporters of the California bill said efforts to suppress transgender youth can lead to fear and mental health issues including depression and suicidal thoughts.
Those problems can be magnified if youths are denied access to gender-affirming care including hormones and puberty-blockers, or if their parents were prosecuted, bill supporters said.
“Families will be separated and children will die because of these policies,” said Alexis Sanchez, director of advocacy and training at the Sacramento LGBT Community Center.
Alabama lawmakers on Tuesday night approved legislation that would bar transgender students from using school bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity.
The bill mandates K-12 schools require students to use multi-person restrooms and locker rooms that match the sex on their original birth certificate. The Alabama House of Representatives voted 74-24 for the bill after two hours of contentious debate where Republicans said it would address an ongoing problem in public schools but opponents said it targets trans youth to score political points. The bill now moves to the Alabama Senate.
“Right now, you’ve got males who are dressing up as females, who are identifying themselves as females, and wanting to use the female bathrooms,” Republican Rep. Scott Stadthagen of Hartselle told lawmakers.
Stadthagen said some schools are now being asked to accommodate transgender students who request to use the bathrooms that align with their gender identity. He said the bill is also about protecting girls’ privacy and safety.
“All you are doing is demonizing an already vulnerable population. It’s all under the guise of protecting children just to win cheap political points. That’s all it is,” Rep. Neil Rafferty, a Democrat from Birmingham, said during debate on the bill.
Rafferty said schools in his Birmingham district have handled accommodations for transgender student, “without targeting vulnerable youth that are already having issues with suicide, mental illness, bullying.”
Stadthagen, in urging support for the bill, cited sexual assaults that have happened in school bathrooms. But opposing lawmakers challenged him to name any bathroom assault where a transgender individual was the attacker.
“How many of those cases involved a transgender woman?” Rep. Merika Coleman, a Democrat from Pleasant Grove, asked. Stadthagen replied he didn’t know.
Similar policies in other states have resulted in litigation. The U.S. Supreme Court last year rejected a Virginia school board’s appeal to reinstate its transgender bathroom ban, handing a victory to transgender rights groups and a former high school student who fought in court for six years to overturn the ban.
The full 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was scheduled to hear oral arguments Tuesday in the case of a transgender student in Florida who was blocked from using the boy’s bathroom.
Republicans who spoke in favor of the bill said teachers and parents in their districts have expressed discomfort over transgender students using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
Rep. Andrew Sorrell, a Republican from Muscle Shoals, said there is a transgender student using the girl’s bathroom at a high school in his district. Sorrell said he would not let his now infant daughter attend that school in the future without this bill.
“I think this is such a commonsense bill. I understand and appreciate that you are trying to protect our daughters,” Sorrell told Stadthagen.
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization, condemned the passage of the bill.
“Today, the Alabama State House of Representatives took steps to discriminate against transgender students who deserve the fundamental human dignity of being able to use the bathroom without being discriminated against or humiliated,” Human Rights Campaign Alabama State Director Carmarion D. Anderson-Harvey said in a statement.
The Alabama bill is the second targeting LGBTQ youths to advance in legislative committee this year. A Senate committee last week advanced a bill that would outlaw the use of puberty-blockers, hormonal treatments and surgery to assist transgender youth 18 and younger in their gender transition.
Last year, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law a bill to block transgender girls from playing on female sports teams at public schools.
Dr. Mehmet Oz leans in to ask a little girl, “Do you remember when your parents thought you were a boy?”
The question was but a few seconds of a full 2010 episode of “The Dr. Oz Show” that focused on the experience of raising transgender children. But the clip now appears in an attack ad aired by a super PAC supporting one of his Republican primary opponents in the crowded and high-stakes race for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania.
Another campaign ad, from Republican U.S. Senate candidate Vicky Hartzler in Missouri, targets transgender people in sports and has her referring to an NCAA athlete — Ivy League championship-winning University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas — by her deadname and saying “women’s sports are for women, not men pretending to be women.”
And on Wednesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who is running for re-election, ordered the state’s child welfare agency to investigate reports of gender-confirming care for kids as abuse.
Derision and disparagement of transgender people, and even of those perceived as their allies, are proliferating on the airwaves and in statehouses across the country as 2022 election campaigns heat up. It’s a classic strategy of finding a “wedge issue” that motivates a political base, political observers say.
“They are just weaponizing the fact that most everyday Americans don’t yet realize that they know someone who is transgender,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “It is easy to fall for a myth about a group of people you don’t know, and that’s just human. … It’s just really unfortunate to now see a group of politicians try to use that to their own advantage.”
Republicans use it because public opinion is on their side, said Neil Newhouse, a veteran Republican pollster.
The idea of restricting transgender athletes resonates with parents of high school athletes, motivates the Republican base, and carries swing voters by 2 to 1, Newhouse said.
In a primary, a Republican candidate can use it to establish their conservative credentials and to come out first or forcefully enough to own the issue, Newhouse said. Or it can be used to push a rival to the left, he said.
Asked for comment on the ad, which does not mention sports, Oz’s campaign — using inaccurate terminology to describe transgender women — said only that the celebrity surgeon doesn’t believe that “biological males should compete in women’s sports.”
The efforts to make political hay of transgender and other LGBTQ people extend well beyond just campaign ads.
At least 10 states have banned transgender athletes from participating in sports in a way that is consistent with their gender identity.
Indiana is poised to be the 11th, although federal courts have blocked laws in Idaho and West Virginia. And then there are states that are banning or investigating gender-confirming treatment, such as Texas.
The narrative of transgender people as a threat has strong parallels to bathroom-use and same-sex marriage bans and can be traced to Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign in 1977, said Andrew Proctor, an associate professor of politics at Wake Forest University who studies and teaches LGBTQ politics.
The political framing is often around protecting girls, which is probably designed to broaden its appeal, Proctor and others said.
“It’s good messaging. Who doesn’t want to protect children?” said Don Haider-Markel, a University of Kansas political science professor.
Although examples like Lia Thomas are few across the country, Hartzler — who cites her experience as a high school athlete and coach — said in an interview that the issue of trans athletes is ad-worthy in a Senate race because it is a “representation of the wokeness that is being inflicted upon us from all sides and has gone beyond common sense.”
A spokesperson for University of Pennsylvania athletics said Thomas would not comment on the ad.
The NCAA in January adopted a sport-by-sport approach for transgender athletes to document testosterone levels before championship selections. For high school sports, states have a hodgepodge of policies.
In Pennsylvania, the TV ad from the super PAC supporting Republican David McCormick tries to characterize Oz as a “Republican in Name Only,” or not conservative enough.
The ad rips a few seconds from the episode and presents it without the context of a show that looked at transgender children from a measured standpoint, with input from a pediatrician and their parents on the kids’ newfound happiness.
The clip in the attack ad stops after Oz gently asks the girl, from a military family, if she remembers when her parents thought she was a boy. The full episode continues:
“A little bit,” the girl answers.
“Talk to me about that a little bit,” Oz says. “What do you remember?”
The girl’s mother, sitting next to her, says: “Like, how did it make you feel when I used to take you and get your hair cut at the barber shop on base?”
“It made me very angry,” Josie answers.
“You did not like your hair cut,” the mother says. “Why not?”
Josie answers: “Because I’m a girl, not a boy.”
A political consultant to Honor Pennsylvania did not return messages asking how that makes Oz not conservative enough. A McCormick campaign spokesperson did not return messages asking whether McCormick agrees with the ad’s attack.
Josie and her mother could not be located for comment on being featured years later in a political attack ad.
“I think it’s incredibly sad when a political leader finds that the only way that they can get themselves elected to office is by attacking vulnerable children and their parents,” said Lisa Middleton, the transgender mayor of Palm Springs, California. “Of all the issues that are before us in this world and this country today … to make it more difficult for a transgender child and their parents to navigate their life to adulthood is irresponsible. It’s un-American.”
Republicans aren’t the only party that uses wedge issues — Democrats often cast the wealthy in a negative light for political gain.
But the GOP’s targeting of transgender people may have a shelf life, just as both parties’ efforts against same-sex marriage shifted along with public opinion, said Paul Goren, a political psychology professor at the University of Minnesota. If it doesn’t pay off with electoral wins, he said, then Republicans will move on.
In Texas, Abbott’s letter came just a week before the state’s Republican primary, the nation’s first for the 2022 cycle. It aligns with a recent legal opinion from state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who is also running for re-election, that is directed at gender-confirming treatments incorporating puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
Pushback in Texas is coming from civil liberties groups, medical professionals and district attorneys in some counties.
Kimberly Shappley, a Texas nurse and mother of an 11-year-old transgender girl, Kai, said she was distraught and had begun looking for a job in another state. The family has already been on edge for years over efforts to prevent transgender children from using public bathrooms that match their identity, she said.
“As the parent of a trans kid, I can tell you that our close-knit community is just a wreck,” Shappley said on a video news conference organized by the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s just been a lot of tears. It’s been a lot of, ‘Do we have our documents in order? Do we have our plan in place? Is this the time we have to move?’”
But it’s hard to know where to go, she said.
“The whole United States is on fire with anti-trans legislation. It’s not just Texas,” Shappley said. “What is the safe place that you think trans kids can live right now? Because there’s not that many left.”
The NCAA has adopted a sport-by-sport approach for transgender athletes, bringing the organization in line with the U.S. and International Olympic Committees.
Under the new guidelines, approved by the NCAA Board of Governors on Wednesday, transgender participation for each sport will be determined by the policy for the sport’s national governing body, subject to review and recommendation by an NCAA committee to the Board of Governors.
When there is no national governing body, that sport’s international federation policy would be in place. If there is no international federation policy, previously established IOC policy criteria would take over.
“Approximately 80% of U.S. Olympians are either current or former college athletes,” NCAA President Mark Emmert said in a release. “This policy alignment provides consistency and further strengthens the relationship between college sports and the U.S. Olympics.”
The NCAA policy is effective immediately, beginning with the 2022 winter championships.
NCAA rules on transgender athletes returned to the forefront when University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas started smashing records this year. She was on the men’s team her first three years, but she is competing for the women this season after transitioning.
The Board of Governors is suggesting NCAA divisions allow for additional eligibility if a transgender student-athlete loses eligibility based on the policy change. That flexibility is provided they meet the NCAA’s new guidelines.
“We are steadfast in our support of transgender student-athletes and the fostering of fairness across college sports,” Georgetown President John DeGioia said in a release. “It is important that NCAA member schools, conferences and college athletes compete in an inclusive, fair, safe and respectful environment and can move forward with a clear understanding of the new policy.”
An Australian man has pleaded guilty to murdering an American mathematician who fell from a Sydney cliff in 1988 in a gay hate crime that was dismissed by police at the time as suicide.
Scott White was charged in 2020 with murdering 27-year-old Los Angeles-born Scott Johnson, whose naked body was found at the base of North Head cliff on Dec. 8, 1988.
White yelled repeatedly in court during a pre-trial hearing in Sydney on Monday that he was guilty, having previously denied the crime.
Scott Johnson’s body was found at the base of a cliff in Sydney in 1988.NSW Police
A New South Wales state Supreme Court judge on Thursday accepted the guilty plea, dismissing the objections of White’s lawyers. White is to be sentenced on May 2.
He faces a possible sentence of life in prison.
Police had initially concluded that Johnson, who was a doctoral student at Australian National University and lived in Canberra, had taken his own life. This was despite the discovery that his wallet was missing from his clothes, which were neatly folded near the cliff top.
A coronial inquest — a court-like proceeding held after unusual deaths — ruled in 1989 that the openly gay man had taken his own life, while a second coroner in 2012 could not explain how he died.
Johnson’s family sought a third inquest, and State Coroner Michael Barnes ruled in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the cliff top as a result of actual or threatened violence by unidentified persons who attacked him because they perceived him to be homosexual.”
Barnes found that gangs of men roamed various Sydney locations in search of gay men to assault, resulting in the deaths of some victims. Some people were also robbed.
A new police investigation offered a 1 million Australian dollar ($731,000) reward for information in 2018 and Johnson’s older brother, Boston IT entrepreneur Steve Johnson, matched that reward offer in 2020.
“I think he deserves what he has coming to him,” Steve Johnson told reporters outside the court after White pleaded guilty.
“It’s a very sad, tragic thing that he did,” Johnson said.
White was arrested at his Sydney home two months after the reward was doubled. Police said at the time that the reward helped in their breakthrough and an unnamed informant would be eligible for the reward once White was convicted.
An Iowa law that prohibits Medicaid coverage for sex reassignment surgeries for transgender residents violates state law and the state constitution, a judge ruled in a decision made public Monday.
Judge William Kelly ordered the Iowa Department of Human Services to provide coverage for sex reassignment surgeries when ordered to treat gender dysphoria, a psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity. It often begins in childhood, and some people may not experience it until after puberty or much later, according to the American Psychiatric Association.
At least nine states across the U.S. explicitly exclude gender-affirming care in Medicaid coverage, while 24 states and Washington, D.C., explicitly include this type of care, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. The remaining states have no explicit policy.
The ruling is a victory for Aiden Vasquez and Mika Covington, two Iowans represented by the ACLU of Iowa.
Aiden Vasquez.ACLU
Kelly said state and federal courts in the past 16 years have found that gender identity discrimination is a form of sex discrimination which is prohibited under civil rights laws. He also found the law violated the equal protection clause of the state constitution.
It is not challenged in the record that surgical treatment for gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition and the surgery is recommended for Vasquez and Covington by medical professionals as necessary and effective, the judge said. He said Medicaid coverage is fundamental to ensure the availability of that treatment for economically disadvantaged Iowans.
“Once the medical community determined that surgery is medically necessary to treat this health issue, the government lost its rational basis to refuse to pay for the surgery,” Kelly said in a ruling signed on Friday but posted publicly with online court records on Monday. “The law appears to draw an arbitrary distinction. So, there is no plausible policy reason advanced by, or rationally related to, excluding transgender people from Medicaid reimbursement for medically necessary procedures.”
Rita Bettis Austen, legal director of the ACLU of Iowa, called the decision “a historic win for civil rights” in Iowa.
“It recognizes what we’ve long known, that transgender Iowans must not be discriminated against, and that they are protected by the Iowa Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, as well as by the Iowa Civil Rights Act,” Bettis Austen said.
The ACLU of Iowa filed a lawsuit in April against the state of Iowa challenging a 2019 law that allows Medicaid to deny payment for sex reassignment surgeries for transgender residents.
Vasquez and Covington initially sued in 2017 and a state court judge found the policy violated the Iowa Civil Rights Act and the Iowa Supreme Court in 2019 upheld that decision. The court concluded that Iowa’s Medicaid program may not categorically discriminate against transgender people seeking gender-affirming, medically necessary care.
Shortly after the court ruling, Republicans in the Iowa Legislature passed an amendment as part of a last-minute addition to a human services budget bill in response to the court’s ruling. That change stated that any government agency in Iowa may decline to use taxpayer money for “sex reassignment surgery” or “any other cosmetic reconstructive or plastic surgery procedure related to transsexualism, hermaphroditism, gender identity disorder, or body dysmorphic disorder.”
Vasquez and Covington, however, had to take their cases through the Department of Human Services system and apply for surgery, have it denied based on the new law and then again pursue a challenge in court. The Iowa DHS has since denied coverage to them. Vasquez is a transgender man who was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2016 and Mika Covington is a transgender woman who was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and began receiving hormone therapy in 2015.
Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the bill into law in May 2019, arguing it only narrowly clarifies that Iowa’s Civil Rights Act does not require taxpayer dollars to pay for sex reassignment and other similar surgeries.
Reynolds’ spokesman Alex Murphy said she is disappointed by the ruling “and disagrees with the district court’s ruling on Medicaid coverage for transgender reassignment surgeries. We are reviewing the decision with our legal team and exploring all options moving forward.”
