Last week, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against WoLF’s position in the Arkansas SAFE Act case, Brandt v. Rutledge. The 8th Circuit Court makes decisions that affect people in seven states: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Read the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruling here.

In April 2021, the Arkansas state legislature adopted HB 1570, the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act. The SAFE Act was established to protect children and adolescents from unsafe medical experimentation; it prohibited a variety of medical interventions, including cosmetic surgical procedures, cross-sex hormones, and other drugs from being prescribed to people 17 years and younger if those interventions were prescribed for the purposes of “gender transition.”

Unsurprisingly, the ACLU immediately sued after the SAFE Act was passed. In August 2021, a federal district court in Arkansas issued an injunction barring the act's enforcement. The state of Arkansas appealed, and WoLF submitted an amicus brief to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. WoLF’s amicus brief supported the SAFE Act. Read the full text of WoLF’s submitted amicus brief here.

To our horror, on August 25, 2022, the 8th Circuit Court upheld the injunction blocking enforcement of the SAFE Act. In other words – the 8th Circuit Court has endorsed the practice of medical professionals prescribing and carrying out unnecessary, harmful, and permanent medical interventions on children and adolescents. 

WoLF is deeply disappointed by the court’s decision. Children deserve to live free of unnecessary medical interventions – especially when those procedures cause lifelong harm into adulthood, including loss of fertility, loss of healthy body parts, and loss of sexual pleasure. You can learn more about some of the ways that these unnecessary medical procedures harm young people by clicking here.

Whether they are aged 5, or 10, or 15, young people simply cannot understand the profound ways in which cross-sex hormone treatments, puberty-blocking drugs, or cosmetic surgeries will affect them for the rest of their lives. Children and adolescents deserve to be valued, respected, and treated with dignity by adults – practicing medical experiments on their bodies in the name of any ideology is the exact opposite of value, respect, and dignity. 

If you believe that all children and adolescents, no matter how they “identify,” deserve to be protected and kept safe from politically-motivated medical interventions, contact your federal lawmakers today! US HR8171, the Protect Minors from Medical Malpractice Act, will help protect children and adolescents from the unnecessary, life-altering, and permanent medical interventions that are promoted and glamorized by trans activists as “gender transition” procedures.

WoLF has made it easy for you to write to your Senators and House Representatives to ask them to support HR8171. Click here to fill out a simple form, and your message of support will be directly sent to your elected officials in Congress.