Missouri’s defense of a state law barring minors from beginning puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will depend on whether the judge in the case puts stock in expert witnesses touting retracted studies and conspiracy theories about Jerry Sandusky.
Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, who is presiding over a lawsuit challenging Missouri’s gender-affirming care restrictions, will have to weigh the credibility of expert witnesses alongside his judgment.
Questions of credibility came up Tuesday, when the Missouri Attorney General’s Office called as a witness John Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern who testified about his now-retracted study entitled “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” which concludes that adolescents identify as transgender as a result of social contagion.
But it was his social media post about the accusers of Jerry Sandusky that appeared to concern Carter.
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Sandusky, a former college football coach, was convicted of molesting young boys over a period of at least 15 years. Bailey repeatedly posted on social media that he believes Sandusky is innocent.Judge Craig Carter, a Wright County judge serving in Cole County for Missouri’s gender-affirming care trial, listens to a nurse practitioner testify last week (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
“You believe the people testifying against Jerry Sandusky are lying?” Carter asked.
“I can see that if you are not familiar with the evidence that I am familiar with, you would be shocked,” Bailey told him.
“Mmhmm,” Carter replied.
Bailey said he had listened to a podcast and lauded the work of conservative commentator John Ziegler.
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“Do you know (Ziegler)? Have you talked to anybody that was an eyewitness in that case?” Carter asked.
“I have read testimony, but I have not talked to anyone,” Bailey said.
Although the underlying case was not about Sandusky, the exchange may have chiseled away at Bailey’s credibility and showed a greater pattern of basing conclusions on secondary sources.
Bailey’s research on transgender youth has been retracted, which he chalked up to pressure from activists.
The academic journal that retracted his article cited an issue with informed consent protocol, meaning participants didn’t know their responses would be in an article. On cross-examination, the circumstances of his research became clearer.
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To investigate his hypothesis of whether “rapid onset gender dysphoria” caused a rise in referrals to gender clinics, Bailey surveyed parents and guardians who interacted with the website ParentsofROGDKids.com, a website for parents who believe their child has rapid onset gender dysphoria.
He said the study’s co-author Suzanna Diaz isn’t a researcher, so she didn’t create the survey with typical informed-consent procedures. He didn’t explain that Diaz is a pseudonym.
He knew Diaz was associated with ParentsofROGDKids.com but didn’t know her real name and if she ran the website.
Diaz had created the questionnaire to “weed out troublemakers.”
When Bailey looked into detransitioners and desisters, which are people who have stopped or reversed gender-affirming care, he looked to the website Reddit and looked at groups titled “detrans” and “desist.”
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Plaintiffs’ attorney Nora Huppert asked if he verified that participants had previously been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Bailey admitted that he had not.
The other defense expert on the stand Tuesday was Dr. Daniel Weiss, an endocrinologist from Utah.
For 10 years in Ohio, Weiss accepted transgender adults as patients that needed cross-sex hormones, but later decided the intervention was harmful to prescribe.
“I’m opposed to it medically,” Weiss said of adults using cross-sex hormones to transition. “I think there’s no scientific evidence to support it. But if someone wants to do it, and they’re adequately informed, they can do it.”
His testimony included a look at adverse event reporting of puberty blockers, which he does not prescribe, and the discussion of risks to gender-affirming care.
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When asked to compare the risks of puberty blockers to aspirin, he couldn’t make a direct comparison.
“It’s hard to compare,” he said. “With any intervention, you want to balance risk and benefit and look at all the treatment options.”
Gillian Wilcox, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, asked if he has published a peer-reviewed article on gender dysphoria. He hadn’t.
“My article, if I were to write one, would be rejected by most medical journals because there is no good treatment,” Weiss said. “I call it child-harming treatment. There is no good intervention.”
He has testified in favor of state bans on gender-affirming care for minors. He told Wilcox that the Center for Christian Virtue, an advocacy group with anti-LGBTQ views, asked him to testify and he was paid to prepare his testimony.
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He does not have clinical experience with minors.
In the state’s pretrial brief, Solicitor General Joshua Divine wrote that defendants will only need to prove “medical and scientific uncertainty” to show that state lawmakers are allowed to enact restrictions on gender-affirming care.
Although the state has entered the trial confident in the task ahead, credibility may limit what the judge will consider from its experts.
Other witnesses Tuesday included parents, one of which lives in Chicago, who disagreed with their children about their transition.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department is investigating a homicide that occurred Wednesday afternoon.
At around 4:18 p.m., KCPD responded to the area of 43rd Street and The Paseo on a reported shooting.
No word on what led to the violence.
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This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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If you have any information about a crime, you may contact your local police department directly. But if you want or need to remain anonymous, you should contact the Greater Kansas City Crime Stoppers Tips Hotline by calling 816-474-TIPS (8477), submitting the tip online or through the free mobile app at P3Tips.com. Depending on your tip, Crime Stoppers could offer you a cash reward.
Annual homicide details and data for the Kansas City area are available through the KSHB 41 News Homicide Tracker, which was launched in 2015. Read the KSHB 41 News Mug Shot Policy.
Columbia Public Schools announced Tuesday that M. Fernanda Blackburn will be the principal at West Boulevard Elementary School for the 2026-2027 school year.
Currently, Blackburn is the assistant principal at Shepard Boulevard Elementary School. She will replace Morgan Neale who announced she would be moving to Rock Bridge Elementary School as assistant principal earlier this year, according to a news release.
Blackburn has 26 years of experience in education, including 20 years as a classroom teacher, two years in curriculum and instruction and four years as an assistant principal, according to the news release.
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“Dr. Blackburn is focused on fostering student success, supporting educators, and building strong partnerships with families and the community and we are excited to have her join the West Boulevard community,” Superintendent Jeff Klein said in the news release.
Blackburn has a bachelor’s degree in bilingual education, a master’s degree in education and a doctoral degree in child development and education.
After living on their farm in Mexico for decades, a mid-Missouri family said they have been forced to fight in a years-long battle, after an electrical cooperative invoked eminent domain.
Andy Ekern said his family moved to Mexico, Missouri in the 1960s. His mother was a teacher and his dad was a doctor. Ekern said they both had a dream to own land of their own.
“They came to Mexico, Missouri with nothing,” Ekern said.
Over the years the Ekern’s worked hard to turn their vision into a reality, curating hundreds of acres of farmland and building a quiet place for their family to call home.
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“This is good rolling farm ground right here.This is all pasture,” Ekern said.
However, a portion of this paradise will soon be used for something else.
About two years ago, the Ekern’s said their lives changed overnight when they received a letter from Central Electric Power Cooperative. The letter asked for a 14-acre easement to build a transmission power line across their property, connecting two nearby sub-stations.
“It was a complete shock,” Ekern said.
If the Ekern’s didn’t agree, Central Electric threatened to use eminent domain.
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“They could come and take the easement and do what they wanted to anyways,” Ekern said.
That’s exactly what happened. Ekern said his mother was devastated.
“For the longest time, she cried every time you talked about it,” Ekern said.
Ekern said landowners’ hands are essentially tied when it comes to fighting eminent domain.
“When you’re the black dot in the middle of the powerline, you’ve got no recourse,” Ekern said.
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Despite this, he vowed to fight in whatever way he could. Ekern enlisted help from The Law Firm of Haden and Colbert to guide him through the legal process.
His lawyer, Brent Haden, said three court-appointed commissioners determined how much the Ekern’s would be paid. However, Haden said there could be a catch.
According to Haden, cooperatives, such as Central Electric, pay 100% of the fair market value as determined by the courts. Meanwhile, investor-owned electrical utilities and merchant transmission lines pay 150% when they go over agricultural ground.
“Central Electric only has to pay 100%, whereas Grain Belt, had they built the line themselves, would have had to pay 150%,” Haden said. “It’s a real source of frustration to think the system could be gamed.”
In a statement, Central Electric said, “Grain Belt is required to pay for any upgrades to the transmission system necessary to maintain reliability of the grid, due to their interconnection. If those upgrades weren’t funded by Grain Belt, then our member owners would have to foot the bill.”
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Central Electric also said the transmission line going across Ekern’s property will be used to support the Cooperative bulk electric transmission system in the region.
A spokesperson with the group said, “It will help to ensure reliable electric service to our member owners. In the Mexico area, that member is Consolidated Electric Cooperative.”
Following the commissioner’s decision, Central Electric requested a jury trial. In a statement, Central Electric said it hopes it can come to a reasonable settlement before going to trial.
Amid the ongoing legal battle, Ekern said work on the property has already begun. He said crews were there clearing the land with bulldozers and chainsaws.
He said it has impacted some of the family’s crops.
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“Where the line is coming through it’s mostly crop, so it’s got corn and soybeans in it,” Ekern said. “You have to farm around it. You have to plant around it. And, you have to look at it, which is probably the biggest part.”
Additionally, Haden said companies are not required to help fix land once construction is complete. He said the law is pretty much silent when it comes to land management and how land is treated in eminent domain cases.
“A lot of people get upset with the way the utilities tear the ground up underneath the lines and there’s no obligation under the law to go back and repair that,” Haden said. “Some of them do a pretty good job on that front. Some of them do a terrible job and they tear up the ground and won’t fix it when they leave.”
While some may think the Ekern’s story does not apply to them, Haden warned the expansion of data centers could change that.
“Data centers are going to use a tremendous amount of power,” Haden said.
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Haden claimed more power lines will be needed to fuel data centers and rural landowners could pay the price, with many possibly fighting eminent domain cases of their own.
“The projections we have here for many rural landowners, it’s almost unavoidable that you’re going to have this problem because of the raw number of lines they’re going to have to build,” Haden said. “They’re going to run out of room.”
Ekern said while it may be too late for his family, he’s determined to share their experience in the hopes that landowners have more protections in future eminent domain cases.
“Right now the landowner is completely powerless,” Ekern said. “We were told if you don’t like it, you have to change it.”
Ekern said he has shared his story with legislators at the State Capitol. Haden encouraged residents to speak with their local and state representatives.
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He said legislation that provides more protections for landowners must be passed.
“The good news is, in a democracy we control our government,” Haden said. “And so, ultimately it’s up to us to get involved.”
