Conservatives have long criticized federal judges, especially on the Supreme Court , who interpret the Constitution in ways that are convenient for liberal ideology by making huge leaps of logic as to the meaning of the law. Many were shockingly displeased when Republican justices did so in 2020.

In Bostock v. Clayton County, a majority that included Justices Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gay and transgender workers from discrimination. The text of the historic law makes absolutely no mention of sexual orientation or “gender identity,” a philosophical concept that was not mainstream in society until just recently, certainly not in American jurisprudence. The “because we said so” reasoning in Gorsuch’s opinion is what we were left with.

That radical decision legally redefined the concept of gender so that any law “discriminating” based on biological reality was an attack on a protected class. In a federal ruling yesterday on child sex changes, the chickens came home to roost in perhaps the most destructive way yet.

Obama-appointed Judge Jay Moody struck down Arkansas’s ban on cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and transgender surgeries for children. “The law prohibits medical care that only transgender people choose to undergo, i.e, medical or surgical procedures related to gender transition,” Moody wrote. Citing Bostock, he added that “discrimination for being transgender is discrimination 'on the basis of sex.'”

It’s clear that Moody desperately wanted to block the bill as a matter of politics. Much of his ruling depends on “evidence presented at trial” from doctors regarding the medical efficacy of “gender-affirming care,” which is the topic of intense debate not only in America but all over the world . But the Bostock precedent allowed Moody at least to pretend that his ruling was legally sophisticated, that he relied on something more legitimate than his partisan whims.

Moody isn’t the only official to do this. President Joe Biden’s Department of Education wants to force schools to put males who identify as females in women’s sports and bathrooms under Title IX, a statute that is supposed to protect women from discrimination based on their biology and sexual assault. The administration's proposed regulations repeatedly, and misleadingly, reference Bostock, even though Bostock involved not Title IX but Title VII. The Education Department wouldn’t need to take the blame for redefining gender because someone else did it already.

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Legislators passed civil rights laws in the 20th century to end discrimination based on skin color or biological sex. Voters today want their representatives to end other evil practices, namely allowing boys to violate girls sexually in bathrooms or locker rooms and castrating children who have been told they were born in the wrong body. Unelected jurists want to override those laws based on the absurd claim that the former group of laws was intended to thwart them. That is not something that happens in a functioning republic or a just society.

The state of Arkansas plans to appeal Moody’s ruling. The sooner someone is able to force this back up to the high court and force it to reckon with its disastrous Bostock decision, the better.

Hudson Crozier is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.