Do No Harm Asks Supreme Court to Reverse Biology-Denying Court Decisions

On Wednesday, August 14, 2024, Do No Harm submitted an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up West Virginia v. B.P.J., a case concerning a West Virginia law that prohibited boys from joining girls’ sports teams. 

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause and was unlawful under Title IX, as it discriminated based on gender identity. Do No Harm is asking the court to acknowledge scientific reality and reverse the Fourth Circuit’s decision, as well as the Ninth Circuit’s decision in a similar case about Idaho’s law protecting women’s sports.

In the brief, Do No Harm illustrates how the appeals courts’ decisions are grounded upon faulty premises regarding biological sex and gender. Do No Harm explains that:

• Sex is distinct from gender identity; while sex is binary and rooted in biology, gender identity is a psychological state.
• Intersex conditions are rare disorders of sexual development and should not be conflated with transgender identity.
• Biology-denying interventions such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are dangerous, lack compelling evidence, and carry unknown risks in addition to known physical harms.
• Despite this, both the Fourth Circuit and the Ninth Circuit assumed that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones were necessary to treat gender dysphoria.
• The appeals courts falsely conflated sex with gender identity to argue the laws discriminated on the basis of gender identity.
• The Ninth Circuit falsely overstated the number of intersex individuals by orders of magnitude, while conflating intersex individuals with individuals who identify as transgender.

Do No Harm hopes the Supreme Court corrects the scientific errors underpinning the lower courts’ decisions, and promptly reverses them.

Read the full text of the amicus brief here.