Sorry for missing this one
A judge granted a temporary injunction on Friday, blocking Kansas’s gender-affirming care ban and bringing “enormous relief” to trans youth and their families, according to ACLU attorney Harper Seldin.
State District Judge Carl Folsom III granted the injunction after two mothers with trans teenagers sued so their kids could continue taking gender-affirming medications.
“Specifically, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs are likely to prevail based on the right to personal autonomy set out in Section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights and a parent’s fundamental right to make medical decisions for their children,” Folsom wrote in his ruling.
Loe v. Kansas challenges S.B. 63, which bans all gender-affirming treatments for minors in the state, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy. Cisgender youth, however, are allowed to utilize those treatments for other reasons.
Trans journalist Erin Reed covered Folsom's ruling in great detail on her substack. According to her, Folsom not only ruled against the state, but he also had some brutal words for the witnesses called upon to justify the ban. Reed said he "eviscerated" their testimony
In his ruling, Judge Carl Folsom III worked through the testimony of the state's witnesses one by one, finding that its anti-transgender “experts”—routinely paraded by groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, SEGM, and Genspect—offered opinions built on "cherry-picked information, conjecture, and research taken out of context," and granting their testimony little to no weight.
He then laid out 349 individual findings of fact, drawn from scientific evidence and the testimony of credible medical experts, documenting the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming care.
He ultimately found that the ban likely violates the Kansas Constitution—which guarantees broader protections than its federal counterpart. That distinction matters enormously: because the ruling rests on state constitutional grounds, it is largely insulated from the U.S. Supreme Court and its decision in Skrmetti, which closed the federal courthouse door to these challenges but left the state one wide open.
I suggest that folks go to Reed's substack to get a full reading of Folsom's smackdown, but here are some morsels involving certain "professional" anti-trans activists who a lot of us already know.
Chloe Cole
The judge also had pointed words for the state's roster of prominent anti-trans activists. Chloe Cole, the country’s most prominent anti-trans detransitioner, testified about receiving care as a minor in California—but Folsom noted that Cole "admittedly did not receive care in Kansas," and that the plaintiffs' expert Dr. Angela Turpin testified the care Cole described "would not have occurred in Kansas" and would have been inconsistent with the clinical guidelines Kansas providers actually follow. Her testimony was given "less weight."
Jamie Reed
And then there was Jamie Reed, the self-styled "whistleblower" who built a national profile on lurid, largely unsubstantiated accusations against a St. Louis gender clinic and who has gone on Fox News to describe being transgender as a delusion. Reed also did not testify and could not be cross-examined. Folsom gave her affidavit "little weight,” and had scathing remarks towards her lack of expertise:
“The Court gives thus Jamie Reed’s affidavit little weight, given that she is not a medical provider or mental-health professional. In addition, her affidavit primarily addresses her experiences with a clinic operating outside of Kansas—thus, it does not rebut or refute the credible, uncontroverted testimony about clinical practice within the state of Kansas,” read the order.
Folsom also dismantled two very popular anti-trans talking points. One is the claim that European countries have stopped gender-affirming care for trans youth. The other involves the Cass Review, a controversial report which has been used in the United Kingdom to undermine gender-affirming care for trans youth:
Folsom reserved some of his sharpest fact-finding for the Cass Review and claims over European care. The state's experts pointed to systematic reviews from the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and Norway as “proof” the science had turned. Folsom found otherwise. "None of these systematic reviews recommend categorically banning gender-affirming medical care for adolescents," he wrote, and "the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and Norway have not categorically prohibited gender-affirming medical care for minors"—as Kansas had.
On the Cass Review specifically, Folsom found that its authors "changed their methodology from the methodology they said they would use in their preregistration, which is a deviation from standard academic publishing practices designed to minimize bias," and "used idiosyncratic standards in scoring and thus excluded studies that had made important contributions to the field."
Far from recommending a ban, the court found, the Cass Report "reaches conclusions that are similar to those in the Endocrine Society Guideline and WPATH Standards of Care" and "concludes that there are young people who absolutely benefit from gender-affirming care."
On Germany, the state had the facts backwards: Folsom found that "Germany's recent guideline endorses the provision of gender-affirming medical care"—a reference to the 2025 guidelines from 26 medical organizations across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the largest European medical consensus on transgender youth care ever produced.
The part about the Cass Review is sure to piss certain people off. And I am here for it. But as I said before, go to Reed's substack to get the full story, including what may happen after this ruling.
