International Partners for Ethical Care v. Ferguson

On September 15, 2026, Do No Harm submitted an amicus brief supporting parents in International Partners for Ethical Care v. Ferguson, which is currently before the Supreme Court. The case asks whether parents may challenge more recently enacted Washington state laws that are designed to provide runaway minors with “gender-affirming treatment” without parental knowledge or consent.

In our brief, we explain the harm the parents in the case are seeking to avoid—pointing out that sex-rejecting procedures in children:

1. involve the physical manipulation and disfigurement of young bodies through medical and surgical means to treat a psychological condition that has no corresponding physical symptomatology;
2. can cause negative long-term health outcomes; and
3. lack evidentiary justification, with recent evidence indicating that such “treatments” may actually exacerbate psychiatric symptoms.

In short, the harms from which the petitioners in this case seek to shield their children are damaging interventions falsely disguised as support and care.

Do No Harm looks forward to the Supreme Court’s favorable determination of the legal standing question in the case, paving the way to resolution of state’s clear violation of parents’ constitutional rights to direct the care and upbringing of their children.