(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Two non-profit groups have sued Washington over a law enacted earlier this year that allows children to receive sex changes without parental knowledge or consent.
The law, SB 5999, 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 the lawsuit, which was filed in Washington federal court Wednesday.
“It does not require children to be returned on any particular timetable or under any particular conditions.”
In a comment to Law360, the press secretary for Washington’s governor said the lawsuit “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.”
The lawsuit argued that Washington’s new law violates parental rights, as well as the religious rights of some of the plaintiffs who believe that human bodies are intentionally and purposefully created by God as either male or female.
The lawsuit also argued that the law will likely violate the First Amendment because state social workers will frown upon parents who don’t use their children’s preferred pronouns.
“Given the vagueness of what parents need to do to convince the Department to return their child and ‘accomplish a reunification of the family,’ it is highly likely the Department will require parents to affirm through their speech their child’s choices as to gender identity, thus compelling the parents’ speech,” the lawsuit explained.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which seeks a court order that Washington’s law is unconstitutional, include 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, the lawsuit said.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
