America First Legal is suing Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) to stop a law allowing children to get genital mutilation surgeries without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
AFL, headed by former Trump administration policy adviser Stephen Miller, is challenging Senate Bill 5599, which Inslee signed into law in May and allows shelters to house runaway children and provide them with genital mutilation and chemical castration interventions if they are struggling with gender dysphoria.
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“The recently signed legislation creates a dangerous incentive for minors who disagree with their parents on ‘gender-affirming care’ to run away to a shelter or host home,” the group argues.
S.B. 5599 strips a requirement to notify parents of a runaway child and allows them to pursue transgender medical procedures.
“Gender-affirming treatment can be prescribed to two-spirits, transgender, nonbinary, and other gender diverse individuals,” according to the legislation. Proponents call the procedures “life-saving” despite a growing cache of evidence to the contrary.
“No state action more frighteningly illustrates the threat to our children than this law,” Miller said. “This sick, authoritarian law essentially allows the state to kidnap children from their parents and hide their whereabouts to surgically and chemically mutilate them — and to formally deprive their parents of any legal ability to stop the medical disfigurement of their sons and daughters by gender extremists targeting their children.
“This litigation is about saving our children from those who abuse their innocence, torment their minds, and disfigure their bodies,” he added.
The lawsuit says the Washington law allows the state government to refer a child for “behavioral health services” without a definition of what that could mean, adding that the bill does not have an age limit.
Washington Democrats said the bill “removes barriers to safe shelter for youth seeking gender-affirming or reproductive health care.
Inslee’s office told the Washington Examiner that legal counsel is reviewing the lawsuit and will respond “in the appropriate venue.
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“The lawsuit appears to be based on the same basic falsehoods that anti-trans groups have been pushing since the law was proposed,” said deputy communications director Mike Faulk. “The bill authorizes shelters to determine whether a runaway youth meets a ‘compelling reason’ not to contact parents because it could result in abuse or neglect.
“This bill expands those compelling reasons to include youth seeking abortion or gender-affirming care services,” Faulk continued.
