(The Center Square) – America First Legal has filed a lawsuit on behalf of several plaintiffs against the state of Washington to stop the implementation of Senate Bill 5599 passed this session allowing youth shelters and host homes to not report youths deemed runaways seeking gender-related medical procedures.
The new law altered existing public policy regarding runaway youths. Previously, youth shelters and host homes were legally required to report their whereabouts to the parents or legal guardians within 72 hours unless there was a “compelling reason” that includes the belief the youth would be subject to abuse if returned.
SB 5599 adds “when a minor is seeking or receiving protected health care services” that include sterilization and mastectomies among the reasons not to report a runaway youth to their parents. The law does not provide a timeframe for when the parents are ever to be notified. Though proponents of the law have argued prior and after its passage that its intended to protect youth from abuse, SB 5599 does not require any suspicion or proof of abuse.
In a news release, American First Legal President Stephen Miller wrote that “no state action more frighteningly illustrates the threat to our children than this law. This sick, authoritarian law essentially allows the state to kidnap children from their parents and hide their whereabouts to surgically and chemically mutilate them — and to formally deprive their parents of any legal ability to stop the medical disfigurement of their sons and daughters by gender extremists targeting their children.”
Citing remarks made by state lawmakers, the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Western Washington notes that “nothing in the statute requires any finding that the parents kicked the child out of the home or in any other way neglected or abused their child to trigger the various constitutional infringements to parents SB 5599 authorizes. In the eyes of these legislators, the parents’ ‘sin’ need be nothing more than the parents’ desire to allow their child to mature before making permanent life-altering decisions about whether the child will ever be capable of becoming a biological parent.”
The lawsuit filed as a pre-enforcement challenge argues that the law “infringes on parental constitutional rights,” under the First and Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and based on numerous U.S. Supreme Court cases concerning parental rights.
Regarding the First Amendment, the lawsuit states that it violates the right to free speech, because “if the parent does not do what the child wants, the child can just run away and get the state to provide what the child desires. And once that has occurred, for the parents to convince the State to reunify the child with them, the parents must confirm through their speech the State’s views on gender identity and avoid saying anything to their child with which the State disagrees.”
There was an effort earlier this year to get a referendum on the ballot that, if approved by voters, would have overturned SB 5599. However, the effort failed to gain enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
