As Gov. Mike Dunleavy appointees on the Alaska Board of Education are poised to pass regulations banning trans girls from girls’ sports, the governor took to social media on Thursday to amplify the latest turn in conservative fearmongering over trans youth.
In a post, the governor called gender-affirming care “pseudoscience” and claimed that it has “lifelong debilitating impacts on children.” In a picture, he posed with his arm around activist Chloe Cole, a young woman who detransitioned in her teens and has since become popular with conservatives seeking to outlaw gender-affirming care.
“It was an honor to meet with Chloe Cole. Chloe had surgery performed on her and was given puberty blockers and testosterone when she was a child questioning her identity–the solution her health care professionals advised her parents to choose,” the governor said in a tweet. “She came to Alaska to warn other of the dangers of falling prey to this pseudoscience that has lifelong debilitating impacts on children. She’s a brave young woman willing to share her story to help others.”
According to a report by The New York Times, Cole has become something of an icon and has testified to several state legislatures about her experience—where, according to the Times, “Republicans lawmakers listen attentively, sometimes in tears”—and was even featured in presidential hopeful Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ State of the State address earlier this year. But it doesn’t appear that she’s representative of the broader experience of transgender youth, according to the report:
As more American teenagers have identified as transgender, it is difficult to say how many will transition medically — many transgender people do not — and precisely how many will later change course. Methodology, demographics and even the definition of detransition vary widely from study to study, which typically show that between 2 percent and 13 percent of people detransition, and not always because of regret.
Leading medical groups in the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, say transition care should be available to minors and oppose legislative bans. Many experts say policymakers should ensure access to high-quality care, including thorough individual evaluations to determine which treatments are appropriate and at what age.
…
“Why are we indicting the treatment of trans youth rather than saying: What infrastructure needs to be in place to ensure that trans kids are properly evaluated?” said Dr. Madeline Deutsch, the president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health. “This is like saying: ‘We have unlicensed drivers on the road, so we need to basically get rid of automobiles.’
Dunleavy’s far-right focus
While some politicos forecasted a more moderate second term for Dunleavy, he’s instead leaned heavily into the conservative culture wars. At his own State of the State address, Dunleavy promised to make Alaska “the most pro-life state in the country” despite abortion being protected by the Alaska Constitution’s privacy clause. His key piece of education-related legislation this year largely mimicked DeSantis’ notorious “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would prevent teachers from discussing sex or gender identity without first getting written approval from the parents of all students.
While that legislation found little traction with the Legislature and voters soundly rejected calling a constitutional convention where Alaska’s privacy clause would almost certainly come under attack, Dunleavy has continued to push his fight in other ways. That includes the Dunleavy-appointed Alaska Board of Education’s ongoing efforts to ban trans girls from participating on girls’ sports teams, which comes after proposals to enact such a ban through the Alaska Legislature failed to gain traction amid massive public pushback.
At its July meeting, the Board of Education took several hours of public testimony on its proposed regulations before ultimately tabling it for a later meeting. While the members have all already expressed their support for such a ban with a resolution passed with no notice earlier in the year, they said they still want to give the public the impression that they’re weighing the issues before them.
As with abortion, many legal scholars say imposing and enforcing such a ban on trans youth is untenable under their right to privacy and equal protection.
And that’s not just educated guesswork.
On Thursday, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit—whose jurisdiction includes Alaska—issued a ruling that continues to block Idaho’s ban on trans girls participating in girls’ sports. While it’s not the final word on the law, the ruling raises familiar issues of privacy and equal protection.
“Because the Act subjects only women and girls who wish to participate in public school athletic competitions to an intrusive sex verification process and categorically bans transgender girls and women at all levels from competing … and because the State of Idaho failed to adduce any evidence demonstrating that the Act is substantially related to its asserted interests in sex equality and opportunity for women athletes, we affirm the district court’s grant of preliminary injunctive relief,” the court said in a ruling Thursday.
Still, despite the unlikeliness of these efforts to succeed, it has taken a considerable toll on trans Alaskans and their families.
One parent of a transgender girl, Chandra Poe, told the Alaska Board of Education at its July hearing that the amount of time her family has spent “standing up for our transgender child’s basic human rights is substantial.” Such marathon public testimony sessions have become familiar in the Alaska Legislature, where conservative lawmakers have held repeated public hearings on their proposals only to be inundated by opposition.
“It is exhausting,” Poe told the Board of Education. “And it is so, so damaging for our child to hear these persistent attacks on them by people in elected or appointed positions of leadership.”
That was a point echoed by Mike Garvey, the advocacy director with the ACLU of Alaska, who told the Associated Press at the time that the fight isn’t just about fairness in sports but about the fundamental recognition of transgender people for who they are.
“This is not about fairness in sports to us,” he said. “This is about a broader social movement to deny the existence of transgender people and to create an environment where it’s hard for transgender people to exist alongside their peers in everyday life.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.