Does liberty really mean something?

No single judge should be able to invalidate the wishes of the majority of Arkansas lawmakers or the will of voters.

That was the bone of contention tossed out during a recent gathering where we all sat in fold-up chairs under a four-legged canopy protecting us from the June sun.

The discussion arose because news had broken out of the state capital. A federal judge struck down Arkansas’ ban on what some folks refer to as “gender-affirming” health care for people under 18. U.S. District Judge James M. Moody concluded the ban, approved in 2021 by the Arkansas General Assembly, violates the constitutional rights of youths and parents who seek medical care and of medical providers who deliver that care.

Act 626 was written and passed to prevent doctors from delivering care to the state’s young people who seek help related to a medical condition known as gender dysphoria.

Set aside for a moment whether you believe people should or should not alter their God-given bodies. I’m not trying to convince you one way or the other on that. But imagine, if you will allow yourself, that for years you’ve strongly felt as though the body your soul inhabits is at odds with who you believe yourself to be. And the thought/feeling is pervasive, to the point you can hardly think of anything else. And you’re approaching puberty and your body feels like it’s betraying your self-concept.

Don’t you need some help to figure out what’s going on? Isn’t that a circumstance in which all of us would want the ability to seek the help of a professional?

Forget the morality questions for just a second. If you found yourself in that situation, would you want an opportunity to pursue medical care? Would you want — and do you have a right to — medical information and even treatment to address those inescapable feelings? Or would you want your care limited not by medical knowledge, but by attorneys, farmers, real estate developers, auto dealers and others whose only authority to prescribe your care arises from the fact they were elected by more than 50% of the voters in a state-defined geographic area?

The people who sued the state effectively argued it’s up to them — a minor and his or her parents — to make decisions informed by proven medical information, not state polices conjured out of meanness, grandstanding or even a belief that government knows best.

Back to my conversation about the power of a solitary judge to invalidate the wishes of the majority. The truth is that judge’s decision is only the beginning. Our judicial system — the best in the world even with its flaws — can only function when one judge, based on rules established through more than 200 years of jurisprudence, oversees evidence and testimony and hears arguments pro and con from attorneys representing plaintiffs and defendants. Then, if the disagreement persists, it goes to courts with multiple judges, who scrutinize every ruling throughout the original judge’s process. And the sides get to continue their advocacy for and against.

It is a wonderful system that, in conjunction with our Constitution, jealously protects the needs and wishes of the majority while guarding the rights of the individual that are at the heart of what the United States of America has represented since its founding. The majority rules, unless the majority is using its numbers to constrain the fundamental rights of the individual that Americans of the 18th century fought and died to preserve.

It’s a system designed to value liberty above all else. And we’ll all celebrate that in a little more than a week, unless we’ve decided individual liberty isn’t what this nation stands for. In that case, July 4th has become little more than a chance to cook hamburgers and pay too much for pretty explosions.