Tennessee has recently passed a bill, effective July 1st 2024, declaring it a class-C felony to “recruit, harbor, or transport an unemancipated minor within this state” for transgender healthcare procedures, carrying a sentence of 3-15 years in prison. This applies over state lines and states that do not have anti-extradition laws relating to trans rights can extradite you to Tennessee.
Notably: the bill is vague. This means: telling stories of your own transition, describing your healthcare experiences to an open group chat, describing your trans experiences on a public website, creating trans health guides online, describing how you have gotten DIY HRT, describing anything to do with trans healthcare, even as a cis person, can result in a class-C felony conviction.
Given that being arrested in any capacity for transgender people can be an incredibly dangerous experience (CW: SV), I strongly suggest you begin caring about opsec, stop referring to where you live, use VPNs, stop using apps like Discord, and stop using social media sites that track your IP or user agent fingerprint while unprotected. Remember that for a bill like this to be challenged in court, you have to be arrested first.
Will discuss creating / linking to a transgender matrix chat so that we can help people to move off of things like discord.
So, if I live in a non-explicitly-transphobic state, can I be extradited to Tennesee for say, posting advice about HRT online, even though I’ve never been to or directly interacted with anyone in Tennessee?
Fugitive Trans Act of 2025
If a minor from Tennessee reads it, it’s possible if it’s not on that map. I’m sure some psychoes might use their kids to try to mess with trans people in this way
Technically if you ever travel to one of the bad states you could also be extradited. Only 14 states have protection
What the fuck, isn’t that unconstitutional?
US Supreme Court ruled back in 2022 that migrants can be detained indefinitely
It don’t matter
What the fuck
That’s old hat now
In an 8-1 ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Immigration and Nationality Act does not require immigration judges to hold bond hearings after six months to determine if a non-citizen should be released while their case proceeds or is a flight risk or danger to the community. Agreeing with the Biden administration, Sotomayor said there was “no plausible construction of the text” of the statute that would mandate the government provide for such bond hearings and that the law did not even hint at such a requirement.
In a separate decision, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that federal district courts lack the authority to issue injunctions to force the government to release immigrants after 180 days without a bond hearing on a class-wide basis.
The decision reversed the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld decisions by judges in California and Washington barring the government from detaining immigrants without bond headings after 180 days.
I don’t think I need to tell you what the aggregate meaning of those two decisions is
Fascism doesn’t care, and the supreme court is full of em.
there’s no point asking that question, the supreme court just does the mental gymnastics necessary to make something constitutional or not.
Maybe cross post this onto blahaj zone (even though some of the users are weird pissy freaks about hexbears posting there, it’s probably important enough to get them aware of this and stuff)
Anyone know if matrix servers are still secure?
You can host a local instance afaik
What does this mean, exactly?
As far as I know there haven’t been any scandals or major flaws in the end to end encryption… so yes? But there is some metadata that can be gleaned by whoever runs your homeserver, and they probably do respond to take down requests on matrix.org if there’s sufficient pressure/evidence that the room is being used for illegal purposes or whatever.
If you run your own server that mostly goes away, but you do still have to deal with your hosting provider, like any website or service you might host. But yeah, encrypted DMs and rooms should be as safe as the vigilance of the people in them.
And in case it wasn’t obvious, when I say server I mean the actual server hosting what’s called the matrix homeserver (usually the synapse reference implementation), not like Discord “servers” which are all one big unencrypted service. You can create what are called “spaces” on matrix, which act like discord servers (can have multiple different channels within them, etc.) and people from any homeserver can join and chat with everyone else.
For anyone curious, here’s the bill in question: https://publications.tnsosfiles.com/acts/113/pub/pc1064.pdf
Apparently they dropped it being a felony in final version of the bill, it is now a cause for civil liability to “intentionally recruit, harbor, or transport an unemancipated minor within this state for the purpose of receiving a prohibited medical procedure under this chapter, regardless of where the medical procedure is to be procured.” There are exceptions cut out for common carriers, the minor’s parents or guardians, and anyone designated by the minor’s parents or guardians and the civil action can only be initiated by the minor’s parents or guardians.
I’m curious what counts as “recruiting” kids for trans health care.
we gotta be more secretive than ISIS online because transphobes are madSooo… I could be prosecuted for being a mod?
probably, or just posting anywhere really
“Your content can be seen in Tennessee. Guilty!”
At this point they’ll try to extradite international posters for existing while trans
I wonder if the weather underground is nice…
Death to the United States of America.
Does this mean if I provide medical care to a trans person (dispense spironolactone, testosterone, etc) I could be prosecuted in Tennessee?
It sounds to me like it’s if that trans person is a minor, and you don’t have permission from their parents.
I mean I have no reason to need that information. Fucking fascists.
“Do your parents know you’re taking this?” Not my fucking business.
And doing so in the state of TN.
ffs
stay safe out there
Damn, look at that one extension of green in that sea of pale yellow with warning signs in the South and Appalachia. That one safe spot that’s just one train ride from Memphis, Jackson, New Orleans, Little Rock, and DFW; the spot that’s just one bus ride from Nashville and then one connecting bus ride from most places in the South.
I wonder if they have a good pro-trans climate there.
I hope someone sues this unconstiutional law for fucking millions.
My current strategy of “stick to the safe states” is starting to feel shakier and shakier.
I’m fuckin scared yo.
It’s only a matter before a red state tries to extradite a trans person from safe state, which will comply in the spirit of bipartisanship. Or maybe they won’t, in which case it will go to the Supreme Court which will rule just the way you expect them to. Fuck this depraved country
Supreme Court might be idiotic assholes but I really doubt they will rule in favor of forced extradition to a different state. This is something pushover blue states might do on their own, but for the federal government to say that state laws apply nationwide would open a can of worms.
Edit: I was wrong. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-4/section-2/clause-2/overview-of-the-extradition-interstate-rendition-clause
They allowed it when it was to kidnap Bill Haywood
This is something pushover blue states might do on their own
Supreme court never ruled that Idaho must extradite him to Colorado. That’s what I’m saying is unlikely.Arguably, they don’t even have the authority to rule in such a way.Edit: You know what I did some research and it looks like I’m wrong.
The Extradition Clause, which is also referred to as the Interstate Rendition Clause, applies to a person accused of a crime in one state who flees to another state. The Extradition Clause “preclude[s] any state from becoming a sanctuary for fugitives from justice” and “enable[s] each state to bring offenders to trial as swiftly as possible in the state where the alleged offense was committed.”
Yeah, not an exact parallel to what you were arguing given Colorado’s complicity, but I figured "Bad state forces extradition by any means necessary, Supreme Court pops up at the end to say ‘Actually, that was fine’ " was close enough to be ominous.
Thanks for the link. Perhaps also relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Felon_Act
They can simply say it applies in this case but not in the others. It doesn’t need to be consistent or make any internal sense. The hardest part is coming up with the bullshit about how this is implied by the constitution.
If you or anyone needs help setting these things up or creating guides please reach out. I’d be happy to help.
