Justice Thomas takes aim at 'expert' class in concurrence banning child sex changes

Justice Clarence Thomas joined Chief Justice Roberts in the 6 to 3 Supreme Court decision upholding Tennessee's right to ban child sex changes, and in so doing, he took aim at the expert class. It was the experts who kept saying that child sex changes are medically necessary and life-saving, but this has led America down a path to allow butchery on children.

In delivering the opinion of the court, Chief Justice Roberts detailed the history of the medicalized sex change movement going back to the formation of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health in 1979, on to their 1989 guidelines to give puberty blockers to children, and through the latest standards of care, which state that there should be no age-based barriers to treatment—a concept backed by Biden's Asst. Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Rachel Levine, who went trans after a full life as a husband and father.

"In recent years," Roberts wrote, "the number of minors requesting sex transition treatments has increased." This, he goes on to note, has "corresponded with rising debates" on risks and efficacy. Then he destroyed the ACLU's argument that banning cross-sex hormones for minors is discriminatory on the basis of sex, saying that those drugs are banned for the treatment of gender dysphoria no matter what sex the minor person is. The Tennessee law, he said, classifies person on the basis of age and the basis of medical use, or diagnosis, meaning it's not a sex-based discrimination thing.

In his concurrence, Justice Thomas slammed the expert class that got us into this trans kids mess in the first place. He talked about how the ACLU and Biden admin's arguments against the law relied upon the fact that "every major medical association in the United States supports this position" that child sex changes are totally fine—of course, they did that because they were following WPATH's guidelines, which were in many cases arbitrary and not based on scientific evidence.

"The implication of these arguments is that courts should defer to so-called expert consensus," Thomas wrote. He went on to list the problems with such a conclusion, giving four key reasons:

"First, so-called experts have no license to countermand the 'wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.' Second, contrary to the representations of the United States and the private plaintiffs, there is no medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children. Third, notwithstanding the alleged experts’ view that young children can provide informed consent to irreversible sex-transition treatments, whether such consent is possible is a question of medical ethics that States must decide for themselves. Fourth, there are particularly good reasons to question the expert class here, as recent revelations suggest that leading voices in this area have relied on questionable evidence, and have allowed ideology to influence their medical guidance."

"Taken together," Thomas continued, "this case serves as a useful reminder that the American people and their representatives are entitled to disagree with those who hold themselves out as experts..." 

In the case of child sex changes, experts relied on poorly done studies and the word of "expert" activists rather than common sense about what's best for children.
 

SCOTUS Skrmetti by Hannah Nightingale