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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The Biden administration’s Department of Justice on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee over its new law to ban the transgender mutilation of children, promising to “aggressively challenge all forms of discrimination and unlawful barriers faced by the LGBTQI+ community.”

Republican Gov. Bill Lee called the suit “federal overreach at its worst” and vowed to work with the state’s attorney general “to push back in court and stand up for children.”

The lawsuit alleges that the Tennessee law, which prohibits devastating experimental drugs and mutilating surgeries for minors, “denies necessary medical care to children based solely on who they are.”

As LifeSiteNews previously reported, Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee last month signed into law two bills aimed at curbing the spread of harmful transgender ideology in the Volunteer State. Together, the laws will ban sexually explicit drag shows for minors as well as transgender surgeries and drugs for Tennesseans under the age of 18. The measures are set to take effect July 1.

READ: Tennessee governor signs laws banning drag queen shows and ‘gender transitions’ for children

The law forbidding the surgeries and drugs for kids, SB 1, drew the ire of the federal government, sparking Wednesday’s lawsuit.

According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Biden administration “alleges that SB 1’s ban on providing certain medically necessary care to transgender minors violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The department is also asking the court to issue an immediate order to prevent the law from going into effect on July 1, 2023.

U.S. Attorney Henry Leventis for the Middle District of Tennessee argued that the Tennessee law “would prohibit transgender children from receiving health care that their medical providers and their parents have determined to be medically necessary.”

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division similarly contended that no one “should be denied access to necessary medical care just because of their transgender status.”

“The right to consider your health and medically approved treatment options with your family and doctors is a right that everyone should have, including transgender children, who are especially vulnerable to serious risks of depression, anxiety and suicide,” Clarke said.

While Clarke’s assessment that transgender-identifying people experience serious psychological distress and suicidal ideation at an extreme rate is backed up by data, studies suggest that attempting to ameliorate the problem with irreversible surgeries and devastating pharmaceuticals doesn’t help.

A March 2022 study, for instance, found that “82% of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide, with suicidality highest among transgender youth.” However, existing studies suggest that transgender drugs and surgeries don’t make the problem better and may even exacerbate it. Meanwhile, transgender interventions have been linked to serious physical and psychological risks, including cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, cancer, stroke, infertility, and, as noted, drastically increased instances of suicidality.

Medical experts who have pushed back against transgender ideology have pointed out that puberty blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and mutilating surgeries like mastectomies and castration cause permanent harm and lack necessary long-term scientific studies.

READ: Transgender drugs and surgeries are creating a public health crisis: medical experts

Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s decision to take action against Tennessee over its state law protecting children is just the latest example of its relentless agenda to promote and defend transgender ideology.

Pro-transgender actions taken by the Biden administration have included appointing transgender-identifying man Richard “Rachel” Levine as the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), hiring “non-binary” activist Sam Brinton as a nuclear waste official in the Department of Energy (Brinton was later fired after being caught stealing women’s luggage at an airport), hosting divisive transgender-identifying activist Dylan Mulvaney at the White House, and declaring that Florida’s moves to ban irreversible transgender interventions for children was “close to sinful.”

This month, the Biden administration floated a new federal rule that would prohibit state schools from barring players from athletic teams that don’t correspond with their biological sex. The plan has drawn the ire of both transgender activists and opponents of gender ideology, since while it would forbid blanket bans on boys playing against girls, it would also give schools some discretion in creating rules to ensure fairness, the AP reported.

This article has been updated to include a statement from Gov. Lee.

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