(LifeSiteNews) — A radiologist who formerly sat on the Wyoming Board of Medicine is suing the state’s Republican Gov. Mark Gordon for ousting him because he wrote a letter in support of a bill against “transitioning” minors that Gordon himself eventually signed.

In March, Gordon signed Senate File 99, “Chloe’s Law,” which prohibits the performance of mutilating transgender surgeries and the prescription of puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones for minors. Violators could see their professional licenses suspended or revoked. 

The bill was set to become law without the governor’s signature, which he ultimately gave despite expressing concern about it restricting parents’ ability to mutilate their children. “I signed SF99 because I support the protections this bill includes for children, however it is my belief that the government is straying into the personal affairs of families” he said at the time.

On Thursday, the Liberty Justice Center (LJC) announced that it is representing Dr. Eric Cubin against Gordon and the state, arguing the governor pressured him to resign from the board over an exercise of free speech. The suit was filed the same day in the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming, Cheyenne Division.

Another group to which Cubin belongs, the Wyoming Medical Society (WMS), publicly came out against Chloe’s Law. Cubin disputed that the statement reflected the views of the society’s members, whom he asked WMS to poll. They ignored him.

On February 28, Cubin relayed his own support for the law, in dissent from WMS, to the Wyoming House of Representatives via a letter. On April 22, Gordon had him removed from the state medical board.

“Medical professionals should be confident that their licensure, which is their livelihood, will be handled professionally and clinically examined on merits alone,” Gordon said, Radiology Business reported at the time. “Even the appearance of bias can be disquieting as well as erode confidence in the board’s presumed impartiality.”

“Governor Gordon unlawfully retaliated against Dr. Cubin for exercising his First Amendment rights,” LJC senior counsel Buck Dougherty responded. “People who serve in government positions do not lose their right to speak out on important issues. We look forward to holding the Governor accountable for his actions in court.”

“I was removed from the Wyoming State Board of Medicine because I took a stand to protect the children in our state. I had been misrepresented by the Wyoming Medical Society and had no choice but to speak up for what I believe to be right,” Cubin himself said. “I urged our legislators to be circumspect about the information they were being provided and cautious about what they allow physicians to do to kids in our state—something that is now the law across Wyoming. I am proud to stand with the Liberty Justice Center and fight this violation of my First Amendment rights.”

A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.

Studies find that more than 80% of children suffering gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence and that “transition” procedures, including full “reassignment” surgery, fail to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide – and even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.

Many oft-ignored “detransitioners,” individuals who attempted to live under a different “gender identity” before embracing their sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion in support of “transitioning.”

Activists’ fervor to enforce conformity with gender ideology has also led to numerous cases of educators, medical professionals, and even parents being forced to affirm false sexual identities in violation of their consciences, scientific fact, and/or their religious beliefs.