The U.S. Women’s National Team Players Association issued a statement Tuesday in support of LGBTQ rights in the wake of a controversy over midfielder Korbin Albert’s social media posts.
The USWNTPA’s statement came in the hours before Albert appeared as a substitute for the national team in the SheBelieves Cup final against Canada. It was Albert’s second match with the team since the posts came to light. The statement did not mention Albert by name.
“The women’s soccer community is one of joy, excitement, kindness and love. We have worked to ensure our community is safe, inclusive and welcoming to everyone. As allies and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, those efforts will not stop,” the statement said.
“Across the country, human rights are being stripped away. LGBTQIA+ rights are human rights. Trans rights are human rights,” the statement continued. “Today and every day the USWNT Players will stand up for those rights.”
Alex Morgan and Lindsey Horan addressed the issue last week during camp. Morgan said it was handled internally.
“We stand by maintaining a safe and respectful space, especially as allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community. This platform has given us an opportunity to highlight causes that matter to us, something that we never take for granted. We’ll keep using this platform to give attention to causes,” Morgan said.
New York state officials may continue to take legal action against a county outside New York City that has banned transgender players from women’s and girls teams, a judge ruled Thursday.
U.S. District Court Judge Nusrat Choudhury denied Nassau County’s request for a temporary restraining order against state Attorney General Letitia James, saying the Long Island county “falls far short of meeting the high bar for securing the extraordinary relief.”
Among other things, Choudhury said the county failed to “demonstrate irreparable harm,” which she said was a “critical prerequisite” for such an order.
The ruling, however, doesn’t address the legality of the county’s ban or James’ request that the lawsuit be dismissed. Those issues will be decided at a later date.
Last month, James, a Democrat, issued a “cease and desist” letter to the county demanding it rescind the ban because she said it violates New York’s anti-discrimination laws. The ban also faces a legal challenge from a local women’s roller derby league, which has asked a state court to invalidate it.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, responded to James’ action with a federal lawsuit asking a judge to affirm that the ban was legal and to prevent James from taking action against it.
Blakeman’s February order, which affects more than 100 public facilities in the county just east of the New York City borough of Queens, states that any female sports organization that accepts transgender women or girls will be denied permits to use county-owned parks and fields.
Echoing the arguments of officials who have taken similar actions in other Republican-led cities and states, the county says women and girls will be discriminated against and their constitutional rights to equal protection will be violated if transgender athletes are allowed to compete alongside them.
James and Blakeman’s offices did not respond to emails seeking comment Thursday.
They zip around the rink, armed with helmets, pads and mouthguards. They push, bump and occasionally crash out as they jostle for position on the hardwood floor.
But for the women of the Long Island Roller Rebels, their biggest battle is taking place outside the suburban strip-mall roller rink where they’re girding for the upcoming roller derby season.
The nearly 20-year-old amateur league is suing a county leader over an executive order meant to prevent women’s and girl’s leagues and teams with transgender players from using county-run parks and fields. The league’s legal effort, backed by the New York Civil Liberties Union, has thrust it into the national discussion over the rights of transgender athletes.
Amanda Urena, the league’s vice president, said there was never any question the group would take a stand.
“The whole point of derby has been to be this thing where people feel welcome,” said the 32-year-old Long Island native, who competes as “Curly Fry” and identifies as queer, at a recent practice at United Skates of America in Seaford. “We want trans women to know that we want you to come play with us, and we’ll do our very best to keep fighting and making sure that this is a safe space for you to play.”
Amanda “Curly Fry” Urena at United Skates of America in Seaford, N.Y., on March 19, 2023. Jeenah Moon / AP
Sports leagues and teams seeking permits to play or practice in county-run parks must disclose whether they have or allow transgender women or girls. Any organization that allows them to play will be denied a permit, though men’s leagues and teams aren’t affected.
Bills restricting trans youths’ ability to participate in sports have already passed in some 24 states as part of an explosion of anti-trans legislation on many subjects in recent years. The largest school district in Manhattan is among localities also weighing a ban, following a school board vote last week.
The Roller Rebels sought a county permit this month in hopes of hosting practices and games in county-owned rinks in the upcoming season, as they have in prior years. But they expect to be denied, since the organization is open to anyone who identifies as a woman and has one transgender player already on the roster.
The ban will also make it hard for the league, which has two teams and about 25 players, to recruit and will hurt its ability to host competitions with other leagues, Urena said.
State Attorney General Letitia James has demanded the county rescind the ban, saying it violates state anti-discrimination laws, while Blakeman has asked a federal judge to uphold it.
That a roller derby league has become the face of opposition isn’t surprising: the sport has long been a haven for queer and transgender women, said Margot Atwell, who played in a women’s league in New York City and wrote “Derby Life,” a book about roller derby.
The sport, which dates at least to the 1930s and enjoyed its heyday in the 1970s, involves two teams racing around a track as their designated “jammer” attempts to score points by lapping the other skaters, who are allowed to use their hips, chests and shoulders to slow them down.
The latest revival started in the early 2000s and has been sustained by LGBTQ+ people, with leagues frequently taking part in Pride parades and holding fundraising matches, Atwell said.
“You come in here and you say, ‘I’m a trans woman. I’m a nonbinary person. I’m genderqueer.’ OK? We accept you,” said Caitlin Carroll, a Roller Rebel who competes as “Catastrophic Danger.” “The world is scary enough. You should have a safe place to be.”
Blakeman has said he wants to ensure female athletes can compete safely and fairly. He held a news conference last week with Caitlyn Jenner, who won Olympic gold in the men’s decathlon in 1976 and later underwent a gender transition. Jenner, a Republican who’s frequently at political odds with the greater transgender community, has endorsed the ban.
Blakeman, a Republican who was elected in 2021, has said constituents asked his office to act. But many critics dismiss the ban as political posturing, noting he has acknowledged there have been no local complaints involving transgender players on women’s teams.
“This is a solution in search of a problem,” said Emily Santosus, a 48-year old transgender woman on Long Island who hopes to join a women’s softball team. “We’re not bullies. We’re the ones that get bullied.”
The ones who will suffer most aren’t elite athletes, but children still trying to navigate their gender identities, added Grace McKenzie, a transgender woman who plays for the New York Rugby Club’s women’s team.
Members of the Long Island Roller Rebels during practice at United Skates of America in Seaford, N.Y., on March 19, 2023.Jeenah Moon / AP
“Cruel is the only word that I can use to describe it,” the 30-year-old Brooklyn resident said. “Kids are using sports at that age to build relationships, make friendships, develop teamwork skills, leadership skills and, frankly, just help shield them from all the hate they face as transgender kids already.”
In the larger discussion about trans women in sports, each side points to limited research to support their opinion. And bans often do not distinguish between girls and women who took puberty blockers as part of their transition — stunting the development of a male-typical physique — and those who didn’t, something one New York advocate pointed out.
The order in Nassau County puts some younger trans girls at greater risk by potentially pitting them against boys instead, said Juli Grey-Owens, leader of Gender Equality New York.
“They are not hitting puberty, so they’re not growing, they’re not getting that body strength, the endurance, the agility, the big feet, the large legs,” Grey-Owens said.
The ban could even lead to cisgender female athletes who are strong and muscular being falsely labeled transgender and disqualified, as has happened elsewhere, said Shane Diamond, a transgender man who plays recreational LGBTQ+ ice hockey in New York City.
“It creates a system where any young woman who doesn’t fit the stereotypical idea of femininity and womanhood is at risk of having her gender questioned or gender policed,” Diamond said.
A 2022 Washington Post-University of Maryland Poll found that 55% of Americans were opposed to allowing trans women and girls to compete with other women and girls in high school sports, and 58% opposed it for college and pro sports.
Two cisgender female athletes said after listening to Jenner that men are stronger than women, so it will never be fair if transgender women and girls are allowed to compete.
“There is a chance I would get hurt in those situations,” said Trinity Reed, 21, who plays lacrosse at Nassau County’s Hofstra University.
Mia Babino, 18, plays field hockey at the State University of New York at Cortland and plans to transfer to Nassau County’s Molloy University.
“We’ve worked very hard to get to where we are and to play at a college level,” she said.
But that attitude runs against everything athletic competition stands for, and it sells women and their potential short, countered Urena, of the Roller Rebels.
“If people gave up playing sports because they thought they were going to lose, we wouldn’t have a sports industry,” they said. “I love playing against people that are faster and stronger because that’s how I get better.”
Wyoming’s governor on Friday vetoed a bill that would have erected significant barriers to abortion, should it remain legal in the state, and signed legislation banning gender-affirming care for minors.
The abortion bill rejected by Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, would have required facilities providing surgical abortions to be licensed as outpatient surgical centers, adding to their cost and the burdens they face to operate.
Women would have had to get ultrasounds no less than 48 hours before either a surgical or pill abortion to determine the fetus’s gestational age and location and viability of the pregnancy.
Abortion is legal in Wyoming pending the outcome of a lawsuit challenging new laws to ban the procedure. The bill was aimed at the state’s only full-service abortion clinic, Wellspring Health Access. The Casper facility opened in 2023 — almost a year later than planned after being badly burned in an arson attack by a woman who opposed abortion.
Gordon said in announcing the veto that the measure would have “properly regulated” clinics. But he said amendments added by lawmakers made it vulnerable to legal challenge.
“The state is closer than ever to a decision on the constitutionality of abortion in Wyoming,” Gordon said in a statement, adding that the bill “had the potential to further delay the resolution of this critical issue for the unborn.”
Most abortions at Wellspring are administered through pills but the clinic has been able to perform surgical abortions as well, according to clinic officials who opposed the bill.
The measure would have required abortions at any clinic to be provided only by a licensed physician who has admitting privileges at a hospital no more than 10 miles away.
The result would have been major new costs to renovate Wellspring to meet ambulatory surgical facility standards while getting “medically unnecessary” admitting privileges for its doctors, clinic founder Julie Burkhart said in an emailed statement. Women also faced added travel and time-off-work costs to meet the ultrasound requirement, Burkhart added.
She said the bill was meant to close down the clinic, which would hurt people who are in need of abortion services.
“Outlawing abortion will never serve as a vehicle for making this health care obsolete,” she said.
Last year, the Wyoming Legislature passed — and Gordon signed into law — measures that restrict abortion in the state, including the first-in-the-U.S. explicit ban on abortion pills. Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens in Jackson has put the laws on hold while considering lawsuits against them filed by Wellspring and others.
At a hearing in December, Owens said she planned to issue a ruling rather than let the lawsuit go to trial. On Monday, however, she sent all major questions in the case to the state Supreme Court to consider instead.
Owens has shown sympathy for Wyoming’s abortion-rights supporters. She has said they are likely to prevail, for example, with their argument that abortion is allowed under a 2012 state constitutional amendment, which states that competent adults have the right to make their own health care decisions.
Attorneys for Wyoming counter that the amendment — approved in response to the federal Affordable Care Act — was never intended to apply to abortion.
Wyoming’s latest abortion bill faced a higher bar just to be debated in this year’s legislative session, which ended March 8. Bills in the four-week session not related to the budget needed a two-thirds vote to be introduced.
“Those of us who stand for legislation like this, we know deep down that life has meaning beyond this floor,” Sen. Dan Dockstader, a Republican from Afton, said in a debate before the bill passed the Senate on a 24-6 vote March 1.
The bill earlier cleared the state House with a 53-9 vote.
While rejecting the abortion bill, Gordon signed into law a measure that makes Wyoming the latest state to ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, saying he supports the bill’s protections for minors. He added, however, that he also thinks such legislation amounts to the government “straying into the personal affairs of families.”
At least 24 states have adopted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for minors, and most of those states have been sued. A federal judge struck down Arkansas’ ban as unconstitutional. In Idaho and Montana, judges’ orders are in place temporarily blocking enforcement of the bans.
Wyoming lawmakers also passed bills this session enforcing parental rights in education. Gordon said the Legislature needs to “sort out its intentions” on parental rights.
Teacher-led discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity would be banned in public schools and displaying Pride flags in classrooms would be prohibited under legislation lawmakers advanced in Alabama on Wednesday.
The measure is part of a wave of laws across the country that critics have dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.” It would expand current Alabama law, which prohibits the teaching in just elementary school, to all grades.
The House Education Policy Committee approved the bill after a discussion in which the bill sponsor claimed it is needed to prevent students from being “indoctrinated,” while an opposed lawmaker said the state is essentially “bullying” some of its citizens. The bill now moves to the full Alabama House of Representatives.
Alabama currently prohibits instruction and teacher-led discussions on gender identity or sexual orientation in a manner that is “not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate” in kindergarten through fifth grades. The legislation would expand the prohibition to all K-12 grades and drop the “developmentally appropriate” reference to make the prohibition absolute.
Lawmakers also added an amendment that would prohibit school employees from displaying flags and insignias that represent a sexual or gender identity on public school property.
“Hopefully, this will send the message that it’s inappropriate for the instructors, the teachers, to teach sexual orientation and gender identity,” said Republican Rep. Mack Butler, the bill’s sponsor.
Rep. Barbara Drummond, a Democrat from Mobile, said the legislation is going “to run people away rather than bring people to Alabama.”
House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels said the measure is “almost like bullying to be honest with you.”
“We’re bullying a certain class or group of people because they don’t have the representation to fight back,” Daniels said.
Florida this month reached a settlement with civil rights attorneys who had challenged a similar law in that state. The settlement clarifies that the Florida law doesn’t prohibit discussing LGBTQ people or prohibit Gay-Straight Alliance groups, and doesn’t apply to library books that aren’t being used for instruction in the classroom.
The Florida law became the template for other states. Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and North Carolina have passed similar measures.
Idaho lawmakers are expected to vote this week on a bill that would ban the use of any public funds for gender-affirming care, including for state employees using work health insurance and for adults covered by Medicaid.
The legislation already passed the House and only needs to clear the majority Republican Senate before it is sent to Gov. Brad Little’s desk, where it would likely be signed into law. The Republican governor has said repeatedly he does not believe public funds should be used for gender-affirming care.
If the legislation is enacted, Idaho would become at least the 10th state to ban Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care for people of all ages, according to the advocacy and information organization Movement Advancement Project. The laws are part of an ongoing national battle over the rights of LGBTQ Americans.
Opponents to the Idaho bill say it almost certainly will lead to a lawsuit in federal court. The state has already been sued multiple times over attempts to deny gender-affirming care to transgender residents and so far has not had much success defending the lawsuits.
The Idaho Senate gathers in the Statehouse in Boise on Jan. 15, 2021. Keith Ridler / AP Photo file
In one case, the state was ordered to provide a transgender inmate with gender-transition surgery, and the inmate was later awarded roughly $2.5 million in legal fees.
Last year a federal judge barred Idaho from enforcing its newly enacted ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors until a lawsuit brought by transgender youth and their families is resolved. A different federal judge denied the state’s motion to dismiss a separate lawsuit filed by adults in 2022 who said Medicaid officials wrongly denied coverage for their medically necessary gender-affirming treatment.
“This bill violates the 14th Amendment equal protections clause” and the federal Medicaid Act, Boise attorney Howard Belodoff told lawmakers during a hearing on Thursday.
Belodoff represents the transgender adults who sued the state over what they said were discriminatory Medicaid policies excluding coverage for genital reconstruction surgery.
“You cannot distinguish between providing care on the basis of diagnosis, type of illness or condition,” Belodoff said. “That’s exactly what this bill does: it violates the Medicaid Act.”
One of the bill’s sponsors, Republican Rep. Bruce Skaug, said those lawsuits prompted creation of the bill.
“This is a taxpayer protection bill in my view,” Skaug said, suggesting that without it the state could end up paying millions for gender-affirming care. Roughly 70% of Idaho’s Medicaid program is federally funded.
Some who testified against the bill suggested it could have a far larger reach than intended by eliminating gender-affirming care for even privately insured residents living in rural areas with only state-funded medical centers.
Isaac Craghtten, an Idaho Department of Correction employee, noted that many correctional employees work 12- to 16-hour shifts, which can require taking some prescribed medications like hormone therapy while on the job.
But the legislation bars the use of any state property, facility or building for providing surgical operations or medical interventions, which could mean employees would be subject to criminal penalties for taking their own legally prescribed medication while in a break room, Craghtten said.
The punishment for violating the law would include fines ranging from $300 to $10,000 and imprisonment between one and 14 years.
Major medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose gender-affirming care bans and have endorsed such care, saying it is safe when administered properly.
While courts have blocked the enforcement of gender-affirming care bans for minors in Idaho, Montana and Arkansas, they have allowed enforcement in Alabama and Georgia.
Mack Allen, an 18-year-old high school senior from Kansas, braces for sideways glances, questioning looks and snide comments whenever he has to hand over his driver’s license, which still identifies him as female.
They’ve come from a police officer responding to a car accident. They’ve come from an urgent care employee loudly using the wrong name and pronouns. They’ve come from the people in the waiting room who overheard.
“It just feels gross because I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am now in my transition, and obviously I don’t look like a woman and I don’t sound like a woman,” said Allen, who has been on testosterone for two years.
Kansas enacted a law last year that ended legal recognition of transgender identities. The measure says there are only two sexes, male and female, that are based on a person’s “biological reproductive system” at birth.
That law and others introduced around the nation this year — often labeled as “bills of rights” for women — are part of a push by conservatives who say states have a legitimate interest in restricting transgender people from competing on sports teams or using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
Critics argue the proposals to legally define sex as binary are essentially erasing transgender and nonbinary people’s existences by making it as difficult as possible for them to update documents, use facilities and generally participate authentically in public life.
They’re also creating uncertainty for the many intersex people — those born with physical traits that don’t fit typical definitions of male or female — with the measures unclear on how people would prove they’re exempt.
Some of the measures would remove the word gender, which refers to social and self-identity, from state code and replace it with sex, which refers to biological traits, conflating the two terms. Others make gender a synonym for sex. Medical experts say the efforts rely on an outdated idea of gender by defining it as binary rather than a spectrum.
“You pass a law because there’s a problem. The medical community doesn’t see people having different gender identities or being born with an intersex condition as a problem for society,” said Dr. Jack Drescher, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who edited the section about gender dysphoria in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual. “The medical community can only stand back to say, what exactly are you passing this law to protect?”
Measures have been proposed this year in at least 13 states — Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming — and advocates expect that number to grow. The bills follow a historic push for restrictions on transgender people, especially youths, by Republican lawmakers last year. At least 23 states have banned gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and some states are now shifting their focus to trying to restrict that care for adults, as well. Others have moved on restroom and sports restrictions.
Many political observers say the Republican focus on transgender people is an attempt to rally a voting base with a “wedge issue” to replace abortion rights, which the public has largely favored, notably in Kansas. The efforts also worry transgender people and their allies that they’re further stigmatizing and threatening a community already at high risk of stress, depression and suicidal behavior.
With the latest round of bills defining man and woman, it’s clear “the intent is to make it as difficult as possible for transgender people to operate within a state,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal vice president of the Human Rights Campaign, a large LGBTQ rights group.
“It’s an attempt to deny transgender people’s existence,” she said.
A similar proposal in Iowa put forward by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds led to protests at the state Capitol. The bill was introduced soon after the failure of a lawmaker’s effort to remove gender identity from the state’s civil right law. It would narrowly define male and female and require a transgender person’s assigned sex at birth to be listed alongside their gender identity on their birth certificate.
“Women and men are not identical; they possess unique biological differences,” Reynolds said after introducing the measure. “That’s not controversial, it’s common sense.”
The sponsor of a similar bill passed by the West Virginia House said the legislation is needed to allow restrictions on who can use single-sex restrooms, locker rooms and changing areas.
“At any given time, we’re unable to protect single-sex spaces,” said Del. Kathie Hess Crouse, the measure’s sponsor, said. “If we don’t have a definition, we can’t protect them.”
Jocelyn Krueger, of Grinnell, Iowa, joined protesters at the statehouse days after testifying to lawmakers that she opposed the failed effort to remove gender identity from the civil rights law.
Krueger said she’s concerned about potential repercussions of the bill, given that a person’s identifying documents “unlock basic participation” in everyday life.
She compared it to how she was temporarily unable to get money from her bank account when she was updating her documents. Krueger worries the Iowa bill could create similar challenges for trans residents, but longer term.
“Not having access to documentation, or things that out you in a way, or where your documentation doesn’t match, puts you at risk for all of those daily interactions where people are looking at your documentation,” Krueger said.
The Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law, estimates there are 1.3 million transgender adults in the U.S. But it’s believed that intersex people represent 1.7% of humans, which would translate to over 5 million in the U.S. alone.
In Alabama, lawmakers added language to legislation defining male and female that sex can be designated as unknown on state records “when sex cannot be medically determined for developmental or other reasons.”
West Virginia’s proposal specifically states that someone who is intersex is “not considered a third sex.” But the measure says people with a “medically verifiable” diagnosis of it should be accommodated.
Before this year, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Tennessee had enacted laws defining man and woman in state code. Oklahoma — where advocates say a law restricting bathroom access helped create a climate that led to the bullying of nonbinary teenager Nex Benedict, who died after a fight in a girls bathroom at a school — already has a measure by executive order, as does Nebraska.
Before Tennessee’s law took effect, advocates held events to assist people on changing their names and gender identities on government documents.
“There’s a lot of potential for harm that seems ready to explode at any moment,” said Dahron Johnson, of the Tennessee Equality Project.
In South Carolina, amendments have been proposed to the state constitution to narrowly define male and female. But the measures face an uphill battle in clearing the Legislature by an April 10 deadline in order to make this fall’s ballot.
Opponents say efforts to codify sex are likely to face court challenges, just as other restrictions such as youth medical care have.
“We’ve already lost this case,” said Idaho Rep. Ilana Rubel, a Democrat who voted against a definition bill approved by the state’s Republican-led House, predicting the state would get sued. “This is really just an unfortunate gesture that makes people in our community feel unwanted and unloved by their government.”
A federal appeals court on Tuesday allowed Indiana’s ban on gender-affirming care to go into effect, removing a temporary injunction a judge issued last year.
The ruling was handed down by a panel of justices on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. It marked the latest decision in a legal challenge the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed against the ban, enacted last spring amid a national push by GOP-led legislatures to curb LGBTQ+ rights.
The law was slated to go into effect on July 1, 2023. But the month before, U.S. District Court Judge James Patrick Hanlon issued an injunction preventing most of it from taking effect. Hanlon blocked the state from prohibiting minors’ access to hormone therapies and puberty blockers, but allowed the law’s prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries to take effect.
Hanlon’s order also blocked provisions that would prohibit Indiana doctors from communicating with out-of-state doctors about gender-affirming care for their patients younger than 18.
In a written statement Tuesday, the ACLU of Indiana called the appeals court’s ruling “heartbreaking” for transgender youth, their doctors and families.
“As we and our clients consider our next steps, we want all the transgender youth of Indiana to know this fight is far from over,” the statement read. “We will continue to challenge this law until it is permanently defeated and Indiana is made a safer place to raise every family.”
The three-judge panel that issued Tuesday’s order comprises two justices appointed by Republican presidents and one by a Democrat. The late Republican President Ronald Reagan appointed Kenneth F. Ripple; former Republican President Donald Trump appointed Michael B. Brennan; and current Democratic President Joe Biden appointed Candace Jackson-Akiwumi.
The ACLU of Indiana brought the lawsuit on behalf of four youths undergoing gender-affirming treatments and an Indiana doctor who provides such care. The lawsuit argued the ban would violate the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection guarantees and trampled upon the rights of parents to decide medical treatment for their children.
Every major medical group, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, has opposed the restrictions enacted by at least 23 states and has said that gender-affirming care for minors is safe if administered properly.
Representatives from Indiana University Health Riley Children’s Hospital, the state’s sole hospital-based gender health program, told legislators earlier last year that doctors don’t perform or provide referrals for genital surgeries for minors. IU Health was not involved in the ACLU’s lawsuit.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita called the state law “commonsense” in a post on X, formally known as Twitter, Tuesday evening.
Most of the bans on gender-affirming care for minors that have been enacted across the U.S. have been challenged with lawsuits. A federal judge struck down Arkansas’ ban as unconstitutional. Judges’ orders are in place temporarily blocking enforcement of the bans in Idaho and Montana.
The states that have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors are: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.
A county board in Ohio has refused to reconsider the disqualification of a transgender state House candidate who omitted her former name from circulating petitions, even as other transgender candidates have been cleared for the ballot.
The Stark County Board of Elections said in a statement Friday that it stands by its decision to disqualify Vanessa Joy, a real estate photographer from Massillon, Ohio, because she did not put a name that no longer aligns with her gender identity — also referred to as a deadname — on the petitions used to gather signatures to get on the ballot. State law mandates that candidates disclose any name changes from the past five years on their petitions, with exemptions for changes resulting from marriage.
The law, meant to weed out bad actors, is unknown even to many elections officials, and it isn’t listed in the 33-page candidate requirement guide. Additionally, there is no space on the petitions to list former names.
Vanessa Joy.Vanessa Joy via AP
Joy said she’s frustrated by the county board’s decision and that, for now, her campaign is over. However, she said she is working with an attorney to try to change the law to be more inclusive of transgender candidates who don’t want to disclose their previous names for personal safety reasons, among others.
“I’m out of the race, but I’m not out of the fight,” Joy told The Associated Press on Monday.
The county board said in its statement that it was “sympathetic to” Joy’s argument that she shouldn’t be disqualified since the campaign guide did not contain the requirement, but said its decision “must be based on the law.”
All four transgender candidates for the Legislature this year have run into issues with the name-change law, which has been in place in some form for decades but is used rarely, usually by candidates wishing to use a nickname.
Fellow Democratic transgender House candidates Bobbie Arnold of Preble County and Arienne Childrey of Auglaize County were cleared to run by their respective boards of elections just last week. But if Joy does not succeed in changing the law before November and Childrey or Arnold win, they could technically still be kicked out of office.
Ari Faber, a Democrat from Athens running for the Ohio state Senate, has not legally changed his name and so has not had his candidacy challenged. Faber is running with his deadname on the ballot.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine previously said that the law should be amended and transgender candidates shouldn’t be disqualified on these grounds.
Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said his team will work to put the law on the candidate guide. But he said his office is not open to tweaking the law because public officeholders must be transparent with voters and are not entitled to such privacy.
The U.S. syphilis epidemic isn’t abating, with the rate of infectious cases rising 9% in 2022, according to a new federal government report on sexually transmitted diseases in adults.
But there’s some unexpected good news: The rate of new gonorrhea cases fell for the first time in a decade.
It’s not clear why syphilis rose 9% while gonorrhea dropped 9%, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, adding that it’s too soon to know whether a new downward trend is emerging for the latter.
They are most focused on syphilis, which is less common than gonorrhea or chlamydia but considered more dangerous. Total cases surpassed 207,000 in 2022, the highest count in the United States since 1950, according to data released Tuesday.
And while it continues to have a disproportionate impact on gay and bisexual men, it is expanding in heterosexual men and women, and increasingly affecting newborns, too, CDC officials said.
A tissue sample with the presence of the bacterium responsible for causing syphilis.Skip Van Orden / CDC via AP file
Syphilis is a bacterial disease that can surface as painless genital sores but can ultimately lead to paralysis, hearing loss, dementia and even death if left untreated.
New syphilis infections plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when antibiotics became widely available and fell to their lowest by 1998.
About 59,000 of the 2022 cases involved the most infectious forms of syphilis. Of those, about a quarter were women and nearly a quarter were heterosexual men.
“I think its unknowingly being spread in the cisgender heterosexual population because we really aren’t testing for it. We really aren’t looking for it” in that population, said Dr. Philip Chan, who teaches at Brown University and is chief medical officer of Open Door Health, a health center for gay, lesbian and transgender patients in Providence, Rhode Island.
The report also shows rates of the most infectious types of syphilis rose not just across the country but also across different racial and ethnic groups, with American Indian and Alaska Native people having the highest rate. South Dakota outpaced any other state for the highest rate of infectious syphilis at 84 cases per 100,000 people — more than twice as high as the state with the second-highest rate, New Mexico.
South Dakota’s increase was driven by an outbreak in the Native American community, said Dr. Meghan O’Connell, chief public health officer at the Great Plains Tribal Leaders’ Health Board based in Rapid City, South Dakota. Nearly all of the cases were in heterosexual people, and O’Connell said that STD testing and treatment was already limited in isolated tribal communities and only got worse during the pandemic.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last year convened a syphilis task force focused on stopping the spread of the STD, with an emphasis on places with the highest syphilis rates — South Dakota, 12 other states and the District of Columbia.
The report also looked at the more common STDs of chlamydia and gonorrhea.
Chlamydia cases were relatively flat from 2021 to 2022, staying at a rate of about 495 per 100,000, though there were declines noted in men and especially women in their early 20s. For gonorrhea, the most pronounced decline was seen in women in their early 20s as well.
Experts say they’re not sure why gonorrhea rates declined. It happened in about 40 states, so whatever explains the decrease appears to have occurred across most of the country. STD testing was disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and officials believe that’s the reason the chlamydia rate fell in 2020.
It’s possible that testing and diagnoses were still shaking out in 2022, said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention.
“We are encouraged by the magnitude of the decline,” Mermin said, though the gonorrhea rate is still higher now than it was pre-pandemic. “We need to examine what happened, and whether it’s going to continue to happen.”