According to a recent Supreme Court filing, manga, Lyme disease and strep can make you trans.
The amicus brief was filed Oct. 11 by Partners for Ethical Care (PEC), an anti-trans organization whose mission is to “raise awareness and support efforts to stop the unethical treatment of children by schools, hospitals, and mental and medical healthcare providers under the duplicitous banner of gender identity affirmation,” its website notes. “We believe that no child is born in the wrong body.”
PEC describes itself as a secular, non-partisan, and all-volunteer organization funded by individual donors. The organization filed their amicus brief to contribute to the highly anticipated SCOTUS hearing of U.S. v. Skrmetti, which will be heard on Dec. 4.
An amicus brief, or “friend of the court” filing, allows interested parties to provide input on a case without being directly involved in the litigation.
PEC’s brief included three anecdotes from parents whose children’s gender dysphoria coincided with other circumstances: a child in Texas developed Pediatric Auto-immune Neuropsychological Disorder Associated with Strep (PANDAS); another parent attributed their child’s dysphoria to their Lyme disease; and another blamed Japanese manga comics for it. All three were intended to support the argument that transitioning harms children.
U.S. v. Skrmetti follows the 2023 passing of Senate Bill 1 in Tennessee, signed by Republican Gov. Bill Lee last year, wherein the state banned gender-affirming care for youth in July 2023.
The law prohibits doctors from providing hormonal treatment and puberty blockers to transgender youth under 18. According to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, medical transition typically involves different types of care at different ages: mental health care and social support can begin at any age; reversible puberty blockers may be prescribed at the onset of puberty; and hormone therapy might begin around age 14, with any surgeries typically delayed until adulthood. In Southern Equality’s 2021 report on LGBTQ Tennesseans, over 23% of trans respondents that were receiving gender-affirming care had received such care prior to turning 18.
Gender-affirming care encompasses a range of medical and mental health services tailored to transgender individuals. For youth, this care typically begins with mental health support and counseling, along with social changes like using their preferred names and pronouns. Some young people may later receive reversible puberty blockers, which pause physical changes and give them time to explore their identity. In some cases, older teens may begin hormone therapy to align physical characteristics with their gender identity. Contrary to common misconceptions, no genital surgeries are performed on minors in Tennessee or nationwide.
U.S. v. Skrmetti, spearheaded by several pro-gender-affirming care Tennessean families with the ACLU, challenges the ban’s claim that gender-affirming care is unnecessary and harmful. Additionally, they argue that transgender and gender-variant people are not protected under the Constitution.
SB1 is one of hundreds of bills introduced on the legislative floor last year, aiming to bar the rights of the trans community. While 2023 broke a record with 615 bills introduced nationwide, this year quickly took the reins at 662 bills—with 45 passed into law.
PEC’s amicus brief, therefore, aims to add to the pool of information to support the validity of Tennessee’s ban.
The woman behind Partners for Ethical Care
PEC was incorporated in November 2020 in Chicago, Ill. Among six anti-trans activists, it was founded by Jeannette Cooper, who according to Andrea James’ Transgender Map goes by the name Jeannette Srivastava outside of her public anti-trans activism. Cooper’s LinkedIn profile shows that she is a doctoral candidate in adult education.
Cooper’s prominence launched in the public eye in 2019—months before PEC’s launch—after losing custody of her twelve-year-old child following a regular custodial visit to Cooper’s ex-husband’s house. When the couple divorced in 2015, the parenting agreement gave Cooper custody of their child six days, seven nights a week. On July 22, 2019, their child refused to return home to Cooper.
Following PEC’s establishment, Cooper’s presence in public discussions—particularly in opposition—of gender-affirming care for transgender and gender-variant youth has intensified.
In May 2022, Cooper testified during Ohio’s hearing of House Bill 454, which aimed to prohibit medical transition for minors. During the hearing, she compared parents who support their trans and gender-variant children in transitioning to leading them “to the gas chamber,” alluding to the Holocaust’s horrific means of death.
Despite declaring that she has never voted Republican, Cooper’s media appearances have historically been on conservative outlets, including many appearances on FOX News advocating for the ban of gender-affirming care.
Cooper’s anti-trans activism has not been without backlash. Imara Jones, a Black trans journalist and founder of nonprofit TransLash Media, posted on X in 2021, deeming PEC to be part of the “anti-trans hate machine.”
“The problem is you’re targeting doctors whose work is legal, ethical and utterly necessary. And you’re using illegal intimidation to do it. It’s important to call out your work because it’s in the public interest to know what you’re up to,” she wrote.
Impact and criticism
Lizette Trujillo says this has very little to do with gender and more about an assertion of control. Trujillo, an Arizona-based mother of a trans teenager son Daniel, has been advocating for him and other trans youth in the state for a decade.
Born and raised in Tucson to Mexican immigrant parents, Trujillo believes that groups like PEC harm communities by “trying to make it seem like their arguments are organic and legitimate,” she told Reckon. Arizona was the first state to propose a bathroom ban be filed, back in 2013.
“They have no basis in science or fact, and they pander to people’s fears and vulnerabilities in a way that has made progress really hard as somebody who offers support to other families,” Trujillo said. “These hate groups really understand how to market and infiltrate communities.”
She adds these groups’ success stems from these groups stem from the fact that in marginalized communities, scientific facts and elaborate research on gender-affirming care might be difficult to access —especially for non-English speakers. Meanwhile, she credits unconventional takes like PEC’s for garnering attention online quickly, and spreading rapidly.
Jack Turban, a child psychiatrist at The University of California, San Francisco, and author of “Free to Be: Understanding Kids & Gender Identity,” says that PEC appears to be a fringe organization that holds views far outside of the medical mainstream.
He stresses that major medical organizations, including The American Medical Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, The American Psychiatric Association, and The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, oppose the slew of bans on gender-affirming care.
“There is no evidence that Lyme disease, streptococcal infections, or reading graphic novels cause gender dysphoria,” he said.
The vice president of legal at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Shannon Minter, tells Reckon that not only is PEC outside of the medical mainstream, but that it is also “so obviously absurd that it will have little if any impact on SCOTUS.”
“The claims put forward in the brief have no medical basis whatsoever and patently reflect anti-transgender bias,” he said. “As their website shows, this is not a group of medical experts; it is a group of anti-transgender advocates.”
Even though Trujillo doesn’t know the answer to this larger issue, she stresses the importance of pushing for child protections for safety, love, and the right to live in supportive homes.
“How do we flip this conversation around whether trans youth are valid, and really put the onus on the families and the communities that they are a part of, and force them to see that rejection and this constant debate around trans validity is actually manufactured?” she said.
She wonders how can people put the accountability on each other as the adults who are raising trans children or LGBTQ children and really start to put the responsibility on the adults to make the world better for the next generation?
“I don’t know what the answer is, I just know that we’re at fault for it.”
