(Ken Silva, Headline USA) U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan has dismissed a lawsuit challenging a new Washington law that allows children to receive sex changes without parental knowledge or consent.
Judge Bryan dismissed the lawsuit because he said the plaintiffs had no standing.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit included two Catholics who have a 14-year-old transgender child who identifies as a girl. Another couple has a teenage child who hid a previous gender identity switch from them while at a public school that “encouraged the transition.” That child has since de-transitioned and now identifies as a girl again.
However, “the Plaintiff parents fail to allege that the challenged laws actually injured them or will imminently injure them in a concrete and particularized manner. Their allegations rest on speculation and conjecture, which is insufficient to confer standing,” said Judge Bryan, an 89-year-old appointed by Ronald Reagan.
Judge Bryan dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs won’t be able to amend their complaint or re-file.
The law that was being challenged, SB 5999, was enacted last year in Washington. It stipulates that children who show up at youth or homeless shelters to receive “gender-affirming care,” which includes the mutilation of body parts and prescription of life-altering medication.
“In short, this statute allows shelters and homes to keep children at locations without their parents’ knowledge and refer those children for health interventions without their parents’ knowledge or approval,” said International Partners for Ethical Care, the group that filed the lawsuit.
“It does not require children to be returned on any particular timetable or under any particular conditions.”
The press secretary for Washington’s governor has disagreed with the lawsuit’s characterization of SB 5999, saying last year that it “appears to be based on the same basic falsehoods that anti-trans groups have been pushing since the law was proposed.”
However, the press secretary reportedly admitted that shelters, which typically have to notify parents if their children is there, now don’t have to follow that requirement if the child is seeking “abortion or gender-affirming care services.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
