Today, Do No Harm filed an amicus brief in Hudacko v. Regents of the University of California supporting a dad who is fighting back against the University of California system, its UCSF hospital personnel, and his ex-wife, among others, who he alleges worked together to have a sex-rejecting surgical procedure performed on his minor son in violation of his parental rights. Ted Hudacko is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case and revive his claims against the California state actors following the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ dismissal.
At issue are important questions concerning parental rights and the rules by which state actors can be held accountable for violating those rights.
We urge the Court to grant Hudacko’s petition and consider his case.
The circumstances of Hudacko’s alleged claims make for an appalling read. During Hudacko’s 2020 divorce from wife, Christine Underhill, a California family court judge stripped his parental rights because he would not affirm Underhill’s claim that their son was “transgender.”
Yet the custody order contained an important carve-out: Any “gender identity”–related surgery on their minor son had to have Hudacko’s written consent or be approved via court order.
Nevertheless, without either, state medical providers at the UC San Francisco Child & Adolescent Gender Center surgically inserted a cross-sex hormone–dispensing implant into the young man’s arm. As Hudacko explains it, he learned of the situation only after receiving a billing statement from his insurance provider for over $200,000 for “surgery.”
The Ninth Circuit dismissed Hudacko’s claims against the UCSF state defendants, determining that they were protected by the qualified immunity doctrine because it was not clear that the procedure in question was “surgery.”
In our brief, we explain that harmful and unproven sex-rejecting procedures for minors have become a serious medical scandal, demonstrating the need for the Court to clarify the rules under which parents may protect their children from becoming the next victims.
Specifically, we explain in our brief that the defendants in the case are proponents of a radical ideology that erases sex and enshrines gender identity. Yet, sex isn’t so easily eliminated. Sex is objective, binary, and immutable — every single cell of the body is forever encoded and operating as either male or female. “Gender identity,” by contrast, is based on a psychological state. At bottom, it is about “feelings,” and it is thus subjective and mutable. As we note in our brief, there are many good reasons that parents of children with symptoms of gender dysphoria may approach such a diagnosis with skepticism — among them, the documented “likely” “role of social influence,” such as media and peers, to shape one’s feelings.
Given these realities, it is unsurprising that there is a complete lack of reliable evidence for any benefit resulting from sex-rejecting procedures for minors and that these interventions can further inflict serious harms.
As we point out, “all well-designed systematic reviews — conducted by experts in Finland, England, Sweden, and elsewhere — conclude that the evidence for sex-denying interventions is weak.” Moreover, experts (and even some commendably candid, though reckless, proponents of these interventions) have catalogued the various risks of sex-rejecting procedures, which demonstrate the danger of subjecting young people to them. These potential risks include adverse effects on fertility, brain development, and much more.
To the extent that parents like Ted Hudacko object to sex-denying interventions for their children, they do so wisely.
Science is already explaining why pediatric “gender-affirming care” is unjustified and dangerous. It is now up to the Supreme Court to determine the rules by which state practitioners who disregard that evidence may be held accountable.
