The Department of Justice announced today that denying a transgender person gender-affirming care or appropriate housing in prison is cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment.

This powerful affirmation of people’s right to healthcare is based on the eighth amendment a necessary check today in cases of lawmakers who seek to end a generation of transgender people through oppression and deprivation of heathcare.

“Patrick Henry asserted….that the lack of a prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments meant that Congress could use punishment as a tool of oppression: “Congress . . . . may introduce the practice of France, Spain, and Germany of torturing, to extort a confession of the crime. They . . . will tell you that there is such a necessity of strengthening the arm of government, that they must . . . extort confession by torture, in order to punish with still more relentless severity. We are then lost and undone.” Largely as a result of these objections, the Constitution was amended to prohibit cruel and unusual punishments.”

The same can be said for the argument the state legislatures who deprive a minority of life-saving drugs while allowing the majority to access them for the same reason without penalty.

Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Agonist Treatment of Central Precocious Puberty is safe.

Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Agonist Treatment to delay puberty in the cases of gender disphoria is also safe.

This is exactly what Arkansas did. They did this knowing that children would die. Four were admitted to a hospital after attempting suicide the week following the signing of that law.

This is what Texas Republicans trying to do today.