Already do haha

yup!

I've been doing both lol

This hobby has me, y'all

First you go to a cute walk with your wife by the river and see some funny duck, and next thing you know 2 weeks later you're taking an online ornithology class and birding in the sleet beside 12 people who woke up at 6 AM to stand in the middle of a swamp to see a weird bird with a long neck.

It will be extremely interesting to see what institutions like Fenway Health and NYU Langone do now. The ostensible reason for their ending of youth gender care is now gone - will they resume care for all the trans kids they abandoned?

Paging @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social now that he has lost an excuse for betraying trans New Yorkers

This would be a perfect excuse for Mamdani to provide leadership and issue a demand to NYC hospitals that have withdrawn from gender care for youths.

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9. If your hospital ended trans youth care, you will want to send them this decision right away. And if your city or state has nondiscrimination laws, they will be implicated now that Hospitals lose their justification to discriminate.

E. Conclusion This Court can scarcely recall an APA action that has come before it in which the agency's action was so clearly unlawful. Indeed, many of Defendants' arguments rest on the same falsehoods about the Kennedy Declaration and its effects that the Court already rejected in response to Defendants' jurisdictional arguments. Defendants' merits briefing takes these absurd arguments a step further by suggesting that finding the Kennedy Declaration unlawful would impinge Secretary Kennedy's First Amendment right to express his views and hinder public debate on a matter of public importance. Page 39 OPINION AND ORDER Case 6:25-cv-02409-MTK Document 93 Filed 04/18/26 Page 40 of 49 Defendants cannot bully or gaslight this Court into ignoring the many procedural and legal flaws of the Kennedy Declaration by invoking one of the most sacred principles of our constitutional democracy-the freedom of speech-when that principle comes nowhere close to being implicated. Plaintiffs' claims do not contest Secretary Kennedy's rights to express his views on gender-affirming care, and their lawsuit does not seek to limit Secretary Kennedy's ability to speak generally about gender-affirming care for minors. Rather, Plaintiffs' claims challenge Secretary Kennedy's authority to unilaterally, categorically, and without any process, supersede professional standards of care regarding gender-affirming care that apply in the Plaintiff states. Secretary Kennedy's First Amendment rights are not even at issue, much less offended. However, several other principles sacred to our constitutional democracy are both implicated and offended: the rule of law and state sovereignty. The Kennedy Declaration exceeded Defendants' statutory authority, flouted applicable notice and comment rulemaking procedures, and impeded Plaintiffs' rights to regulate the medical profession and their discretion to design their own statutorily-compliant Medicaid plans.

8. Perhaps most absurdly, the government argued that striking down the Declaration would violate Sec. Kennedy's 1st Amendment rights—essentially claiming that the Declaration was just one man sharing his personal opinions about medicine.

The judge was not amused.

7. The judge ruled that the declaration violated the law in four ways... the APA, Medicare's notice and comment procedures, the federally approved state medicaid plan terms, and the plain language statute of the Medicare Act which bars control over the practice of medicine.

Case No. 6:25-cv-02409-MTK OPINION AND ORDER STATE OF OREGON, et al., Plaintiffs, V. ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR., in his official capacity as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, et al., Defendants. KASUBHAI, United States District Judge: Unserious leaders are unsafe. There is nothing more serious than our leaders' dedication to the rule of law so that we might maintain the integrity of our constitutional democracy. This case highlights a leader's unserious regard for the rule of law. This case demonstrates how disregard for the rule of law does not merely result in an abstract infraction. Rather, and tragically, this case is one of a long list of examples of how a leader's wanton disregard for the rule of law causes very real harm to very real people. This Court can and does judge the lawfulness of the process (or lack thereof) by which any policy choice might be made. Here, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., unlawfully issued a declaration threatening to cut federal funding to medical providers who provided gender-affirming care to minors. If such a declaration could have been Page 1 OPINION AND ORDER

6. The opinion was scathing, and called out the Trump administration for flagrant abuse of authority and disdain toward the rule of law. “Unserious leaders are unsafe,” Judge Kasubhai wrote in the opinion’s opening line. “There is nothing more serious than our leaders’ dedication to the rule of law"

Nationwide Trans Youth Care Ban Incoming As Trump Admin Announces "Nuclear Option" Federal Rule The new federal rule formalizes previous threats to hospitals to pull Medicaid funding, and represents a significant legal stretch by this administration. Most trans youth care would be impacted.

5. The case centers on the Kennedy Declaration, issued on December 18, 2025, which was widely covered at the time as a "nuclear option" against transgender youth care.
www.erininthemorning.com/p/nationwide...

Its Time For Mayor Mamdani To Live Up To His Campaign Promises On Transgender Youth With NYU Langone's shuttering of its transgender youth care program, New York City has significant tools in its toolbox to push back.

4. The ruling could have enormous implications in states like Colorado, where Children's Hospital Colorado is fighting a state Supreme Court case while still citing federal threats as justification for refusing to treat trans youth, and in New York.
www.erininthemorning.com/p/its-time-f...

Amid federal pressure, more hospitals stop gender-affirming care for minors A STAT analysis found more than 40 hospitals have paused or ceased to offer some gender-affirming care to young people since President Trump took office.

3. The vacatur applies nationwide, eliminating the legal basis that roughly 40 hospitals cited when they shuttered their trans youth care programs earlier this year.

www.statnews.com/2026/02/05/h...

2. This is a major, 49 page ruling. Many people have excused hospitals capitulating to Trump on this. Many have excused elected officials for not enforcing state law against hospitals that capitulate. Now, the basis for their capitulation has been STRUCK DOWN.

Federal Judge Vacates Kennedy Declaration, Permanently Blocks Trump's Trans Youth Care Hospital Threats The judgment overturns the Kennedy Declaration which has been used to force 40 hospitals to drop trans youth care.

1. This weekend, a federal judge permanently blocked funding threats to providers and hospitals that provide trans youth care.

The judge also blocked "any similar policy."

Hospitals have NO excuse and must return to providing care under many blue state laws.

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Sony A7c with a 200-600mm lens

Incredible day of 30+ species on my bird walk this morning, this time with a local birding club.

The picture of the day is this gorgeous tree swallow who was nesting nearby, we had to go around it, and so I got a beautiful shot :)

Beautiful birding walk this morning. Got my first American Coot, a beautiful bluebird, saw my orchard oriole again, and some Mourning Doves.

Mourning doves look so silly.

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9. The ruling is monumental for trans Montanans. Because the decision rests entirely on the Montana Constitution, it is insulated from the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Montana case law interpreting the Individual Dignity provisions directs our analysis, not federal precedent."

First, the classes the Court proposes are only theoretically viable, and not supported in fact, starting with its definition of “cisgender people,” which the Court proffers are people who “have a gender identity that aligns with their sex assigned at birth.” Opinion, ¶ 5. However, this use of “cisgender”—a term that is not only inaccurate but potentially offensive, as explained below—mistakenly theorizes that all people living consistent with their birth sex have made a deliberate “gender identity” decision to adopt such a lifestyle. However, in this context, a “gender identity” and a gender identity choice are inapplicable 38 to males and females living consistent with their biological birth sex, because they have made no such choice and simply live as they physically originated. There is no evidence whatsoever that every such person has made a “gender identity” decision, as it is completely unnecessary.2 The need to “gender identify” arises only when people want to live a lifestyle inconsistent with their biological origin. Choices to “identify” with a gender that departs from one’s birth sex are made by people suffering from gender dysphoria, but no “gender identity” choice is necessary in order to live consistently with a person’s biological sex—that is, the physical reality of their biology.

8. The two dissenters were far more hostile toward transgender people. Justice Rice repeatedly referred to the plaintiffs—both trans women—using male pronouns and the phrase “biological male”, and dismissed the term “cisgender” as “not only inaccurate but potentially offensive.”

7. Montana's court put it simply: if a cis woman's birth certificate says "M" by mistake, she can fix it. If a trans woman's says "M," she can't. Both want the same document. One gets it; the other doesn't. The only difference is sex assigned at birth. That is a law that by definition hinges on sex.

28 Being transgender is also a suspect class under the Equal Protection Clause of Article II, Section 4,––“[n]o person shall be denied equal protection of the law.” The central premise of our state’s equal protection guarantee “is that persons similarly situated with respect to a legitimate governmental purpose of the law must receive like treatment.” Goble v. Mont. State Fund, 2014 MT 99, ¶ 28, 374 Mont. 453, 325 P.3d 1211 (quoting Rausch v. State Comp. Ins. Fund, 2005 MT 140, ¶ 18, 327 Mont. 272, 114 P.3d 192). We apply a three-step analysis to equal protection claims based on a suspect class: we “(1) identify the classes involved and determine if they are similarly situated; (2) determine

6. The court also went a step further. The Montana court separately declared that trans people constitute a suspect class. In legal terms, a suspect class is a group that has faced such severe discrimination that any law targeting them must meet the highest level of judicial scrutiny to survive.

each time an inquiry is made. Government issued identification documents are necessary to access public life. When they do not accurately reflect a person’s sexual identity, the transgender Montanan is prevented, based on their sex, from obtaining the same attributes of public life that a cisgender Montanan may obtain. Hence, the inability of transgender Montanans to receive government-issued identification documents accurately reflecting their gender identity is fundamentally about the nature of sex and suspect class discrimination under Article II, Section 4––a clause that enshrines individual dignity, equal protection, and nondiscrimination. Transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination. Discrimination based on sex is expressly prohibited under Montana’s unique Nondiscrimination Clause––“[n]either the state nor any person, firm, corporation, or institution shall discriminate on account of . . . sex . . . .” Thus, Article II, Section 4 is unequivocal in its intolerance for discrimination based on sex. Because sex discrimination involves a fundamental right under Article II, the appropriate level of judicial review is strict scrutiny. Snetsinger, ¶ 17. ¶28

5. Now, a 5-2 majority of the Montana Supreme Court has affirmed that ruling and gone further. Justice Laurie McKinnon, writing for the majority, declared that trans discrimination is sex discrimination.

4. The decision rests on Montana's constitution, whose Equal Protection and Individual Dignity clause has been repeatedly interpreted to protect transgender people—and which the court made clear provides far greater protection than the federal constitution.

3. The ruling in Kalarchik v. State of Montana blocks a definition-of-sex law and related state policies that stripped all legal recognition from transgender people and barred them from obtaining accurate birth certificates and driver's licenses.

2. On Monday, the Montana Supreme Court issued a landmark 5-2 ruling declaring that "transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination," and that transgender people constitute a suspect class under the state's equal protection clause.

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