Fifteen states are now cooperating and threatening to sue the state of Maine over its radical transgender protection bill that would allow children to be trafficked across state lines into Maine where they would be protected by law while undergoing “gender-affirming care.”
Maine is mulling a bill that would shield any child who wants to undergo transgender procedures no matter where he or she is from. The bill would also automatically invalidate any court action in any other state that might tend to disallow a child to undergo “gender-affirming care” because, in Maine, the procedures would be the patient’s “legal right.”
Democrats in the blue state have introduced LD 227, the so-called “Maine Healthcare Freedom Act,” a bill that would have far-reaching effects not just in Maine but in every other state.
The bill so radically invalidates any legal action in every other state and sets Maine up as a “sanctuary state” for the transgendering of children that a large number of other states have joined together to warn Maine that they will sue the state in federal court to stop the bill from becoming law.
The attorneys general from Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia have signed a letter warning Maine not to “contravene the lawful policy choices of our States” with its bill to invalidate legal actions outside Maine.
“While it is extremely unusual for States to interject themselves into another State’s lawmaking, LD 227’s unique constitutional transgressions merit our comment,” the attorneys general wrote in their letter, according to WMTW-TV. “LD 227 seeks to contravene the lawful policy choices of our States’ citizens by imposing on the rest of the country Maine’s views on hotly debated issues such as gender transition surgeries for children. The law’s far-reaching provisions are unprecedented.”
The attorneys general claim that Maine’s bill violates the U.S. Constitution and “flouts the federalist structure that allows each of our States to engage in self-government.” They say that if Maine passes LD 227, the other states will “vigorously avail ourselves of every recourse our Constitution provides.”
The bill would allow anyone to traffick children to Maine for “gender-affirming care” and would prevent the serving of legal rulings from the states those children are from. For instance, if parents in Texas succeed in gaining a court order preventing their child from undergoing gender-affirming care, LD 227 would allow that child to be transported to Maine, and the Texas parents would be prevented from having any contact with their child, who is undergoing transgender treatment, abortion, or in-vitro fertilization.
LD 227 also protects outside citizens who wish to travel to Maine for radical late-term abortion as well as in-vitro fertilization — both of which are illegal in other states — and would prevent any court orders from their home states from being carried out.
The bill also safeguards insurers, health care providers, doctors, and even the police from being sued by out-of-state citizens.
Another extreme provision of the bill would allow people to sue anyone, anywhere who would try to interfere in “gender-affirming” procedures, meaning parents who try to stop a third party from perpetrating a sex change for their child could end up being sued by the doctors, hospital, or any other tangentially interested party.
LD 227 allows individuals targeted by “hostile litigation” in other states to counter-sue in Maine, allowing them to earn damages, punitive damages, and legal fees from their case.
These provisions essentially allow Maine to threaten the laws of other states if they run counter to Maine’s proclamations in support of transgenderism, in-vitro fertilization, and late-term abortions.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey was appalled by the letter and said he feels Maine’s bill will hold up to any legal challenges. He further claims that Maine’s law is anodyne and that several other states have similar protective laws already on the books.
Frey also said that the solution to the issue is to adopt Maine’s liberal approach to “gender-affirming care” everywhere. “Harmony between our states would be best preserved and promoted by the exercise of restraint by all parties seeking to control health care related policy choices in other states,” he said.
Detractors of the bill inside Maine, though, point out that the Democrats used a legislative trick to get their bill introduced in the state legislature in a way that would limit the ability of Mainers to see the bill ahead of time and to quash debate on its contents.
The Democrats introduced the bill as a “concept draft bill” in 2023, meaning that the bill’s language was not filed to the Maine legislature ahead of the debate in committee in March. All the public could see of the bill online was a one-line title, no text. The bill’s text was not supplied to legislators until the committee began to discuss its provisions, Maine Wire reported. Indeed, the bill’s text has still not been posted to the state’s bill tracking website.
Republican Maine State Rep. Laurel Libby posted a video explaining what LD 227 would do and how it was introduced.
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