The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has approached the issue of gender transition procedures for minors from a unique angle, transmitting a legislative proposal to Congress last Wednesday. The bill aims to help detransitioners seek justice, and it applies only to circumstances in which the federal government has clear jurisdiction.

The legislation forbids doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers to “directly engage in the planning, authorization, prescription, administration, or performance of any act constituting chemical or surgical mutilation,” including prescribing or administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, carrying out gender transition surgeries, or knowingly coordinating any such treatments.

The legislation is enforced by allowing “an individual subjected as a child to chemical or surgical mutilation” to bring a civil action for damages in federal court.

Notably, the bill stipulates an unusually long statute of limitations. The minor may bring a suit “either within 25 years from the date of the eighteenth birthday … or within 4 years from the time the cost of a detransition treatment is incurred, whichever date is later.” The stated reason for this timetable is “because these decisions are often made by parents, or medical providers, on a child’s behalf, and because these actions often have long term effects that are not discovered until years after the medical actions have been taken.”

This language evidently reflects the influence of detransitioners, who have petitioned federal officials for justice but have found their efforts blocked by much shorter statutes of limitations. In fact, Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested as much in a press release. “The Department of Justice has heard from far too many families who have been devastated by mutilative medical procedures that fly in the face of basic biology,” she said.

“Until we can extend that statute of limitations for everybody, nothing is going to happen,” said attorney Martha Shoultz, who leads the group Transition Justice. “Most of these kids will be stuck with no remedy.” For instance, North Carolina recently extended its window of malpractice claims from four years to 10, which would allow some detransitioners like Prisha Mosley to sue, but not all.

The timetable in the federal bill would allow detransitioners to sue over the harm done to their bodies until at least the age of 43.

Regular readers of TWS may notice the similarity to the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, Help Not Harm Act, and like legislation that protects minors from gender transition procedures, laws that 27 state legislatures have enacted since 2021.

The catch is that, while states have broad latitude to regulate health care under their police powers, federal authority is limited by the U.S. Constitution. Thus, the bill limits its prohibition to seven “circumstances” that fall within the federal government’s purview. The prohibition would apply if the gender transition procedure in any way involved “interstate or foreign commerce,” including travel, financial transactions, or communications across state lines. It would also apply to the District of Columbia and other federal territories.

The DOJ’s legislative proposal reflects the Trump administration’s ongoing commitment to not only disentangle the federal government from the agenda of transgender activists, but also to swing the pendulum in the other direction. In this case, the bill empowers people who were harmed by gender transition procedures as minors, and who have come to realize the goodness of their biological sex, to get justice from the health care providers who exploited their ignorance and confusion for profit.

Every person’s biological sex is created by God and imprinted with his image from creation. Moses explains, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). This maleness and femaleness was and remains part of God’s original blueprint for creation, which cannot be thwarted by any of the cosmetic alterations human ingenuity has devised. Nor should it be thwarted, for “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).