Last week, Advocates For Faith and Freedom filed a lawsuit on behalf of Our Watch against a newly signed California law that seek to turn the state into a mecca for minors wanting sterilizing trans-drugs and surgeries even if their parents object.
The Transgender Sanctuary Bill. SB 107, authorizes California courts to take emergency jurisdiction over a child if they come to the state seeking “gender-affirming care.” The bill also incentivizes kidnapping by prohibiting courts “from considering the taking or retention of a child from a person who has legal custody of the child, if the taking or retention was for obtaining gender-affirming health care or mental health care.”
“Gender Affirming Care” is a euphemism for any drugs or surgeries used to make a person look like the opposite sex.
The bill also denies parents their right to access their child’s medical information relating to “gender-affirming health care” or “gender-affirming mental health care.”
“SB 107 is a dangerous piece of legislation that strips the right of parents to direct the care and upbringing of their child,” said Mariah Gondeiro, legal counsel for Advocates for Faith and Freedom. “Parents, not the government, are best suited to decide whether their child should undergo life-altering drugs and surgeries that will impair their ability to become a parent later in life.”
“One of my top priorities has been the preservation of parental rights, and I believe SB 107 is a dangerous, irresponsible law that is an assault on those rights,” said President of Our Watch and Pastor of 412 Temecula Valley Pastor Tim Thompson.
Gondeiro and Thompson are absolutely right. The Transgender Sanctuary Bill is one of the most outrageous bills to ever be signed into law in California, and it needs to be struck down.
Prominent detransitioner Chloe Cole is also speaking out against the bill, saying, “As someone who has been harmed by these policies, it is imperative that we challenge SB 107 because it will allow vulnerable children from other states to undergo life-altering and harmful surgeries and drugs.”
The bill strips parents of their right to protect their children from harm. If left in place, Chloe’s tragic story will only become more common.
The lawsuit primarily argues that the bill is unconstitutional. It violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Full Faith and Credit Clause because it was passed in direct opposition to conservative state laws like Alabama and Texas.
Further, the lawsuit notes that Supreme Court precedent “affirms the right of parents to make medical decisions for their children.” Citing Wallis v. Spencer and Calabretta v. Floyd, the lawsuit claims that “the right to family association includes the right of parents to make important medical decisions for their children, and of children to have those decisions made by their parents rather than the state.”
“California has neither a legitimate nor legal interest in exceeding its jurisdiction by taking deeply personal, intimate, and life-altering medical decisions of out of state children into their own hands,” continues the lawsuit. “Immediate relief is necessary to prevent the State of California from permanently harming minors, hiding medical information from parents, taking away custody of children from their own parents, and denying courts of the family’s home state the ability to exercise its rightful jurisdiction over the case.”
Each of these arguments should be enough to defeat SB 107 for good. Hopefully, this lawsuit will give parents back their fundamental rights and save gender dysphoric children from severe physical and psychological harm.
