In the Supreme Court‘s decision last month in the case of United States v. Skrmetti, in which a Tennessee law that banned sex transition medical procedures was ruled to be constitutional, Justice Clarence Thomas criticized the use of the testimony by alleged “experts,” especially in the context of highly disputed scientific and medical developments. The Daily Caller called attention to Justice Thomas’s comments in its report on the SCOTUS decision on June 18:
“This case carries a simple lesson: In politically contentious debates over matters shrouded in scientific uncertainty, courts should not assume that self-described experts are correct,” Thomas wrote in a concurrence.
Courts should defer to legislatures over experts, Thomas wrote, noting medical professionals “declared a consensus around the efficacy of treating children’s gender dysphoria with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.”
“They have dismissed grave problems undercutting the assumption that young children can consent to irreversible treatments that may deprive them of their ability to eventually produce children of their own,” Thomas wrote. “They have built their medical determinations on concededly weak evidence. And, they have surreptitiously compromised their medical recommendations to achieve political ends.”
“Detransitioners” who regret undergoing medical procedures raise another cause for concern, Thomas wrote.
“States have an interest in ensuring that minor patients have the time and capacity to fully understand the irreversible treatments they may undergo,” he said.
Justice Thomas’s concurrence echoes points NLPC made in support of shareholder proposals we sponsored and presented over the past two years at the annual meetings for Disney, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, PepsiCo, and Visa. These five proposals, written very similarly, used language from previous proposals by other groups that addressed compensation and benefits discrimination against employees based on race and gender. We turned the usual argument by leftist advocates on its head, contending that these corporations discriminate against detransitioners by providing gender transition procedure coverage through health insurance plans for employees and their child dependents, but offer no such care for those who wish to detransition after their regrettable decisions.
To drive our points home, we enlisted help from two detransitioners to tell their personal stories: Chloe Cole at the Disney meeting last year, and Claire Abernathy at Visa’s meeting in January. You can watch Chloe’s presentation below:
Just got off the phone from the @Disney annual shareholders meeting.
I needed to call out Bob Iger and the rest of the board’s hypocrisy and the dangerous lies they feed to us through the media.
Here is what I said: pic.twitter.com/OxQOgPNvoi
— Chloe Cole ⭐️ (@ChoooCole) April 3, 2024
Justice Thomas wrote there is “mounting evidence to the contrary” with regard to claims of a medical “consensus” about the effectiveness of treating gender dysphoria with permanent body-altering chemicals and surgeries. In our proxy memoranda in support of our detransitioner discrimination proposals, we identified several examples of negative outcomes as the result of such treatments. In our report in support of our Visa proposal — posted on the company’s docket at the Securities and Exchange Commission website — we cited no less than 10 instances or studies that provided clear evidence to challenge the so-called “consensus” on gender transitioning.
As Chloe Cole stated above in addressing CEO Bob Iger and Disney’s board of directors at last year’s annual meeting:
The lawsuits are coming, sir.
It’s only a matter of time before current or past employees, whose bodies and lives have been irreversibly harmed, will show up at your door looking for justice and restitution.
Companies need to heed her warning, lest they become targets that cause great expense to their corporate reputations and to shareholder value. Their justification for coverage of these mutilation procedures, including for employees’ child dependents, is no longer acceptable. The public is on to and has rejected these so-called medical “experts,” and now so has Justice Thomas. Those in Corporate America should hope their lawyers never have to defend these health insurance coverage policies in front of him.
