OPEN LETTER TO DR. AMY ACTON

TO: Dr. Amy Acton and the Acton for Ohio Campaign

FROM: Concerned Ohioans for Intersectional Justice

RE: Harm Against Transgender Youth and Protecting All Ohio Communities

Dear Dr. Amy Acton,

We write to you as healthcare workers, parents, students, educators, immigrants, refugees, grassroots community organizers, and community members of all races, faiths, and backgrounds living across Ohio. We write grounded in intersectional solidarity, collective care, and human dignity—principles that compel us to speak out when political candidates treat vulnerable communities as disposable political collateral.

In the spring of 2020, you earned our trust as you guided our state through a public health crisis with clarity, empathy, and moral conviction. When national political forces downplayed mass illness, you stood firm on medical evidence, transparency, and the foundational duty to do no harm.

That is precisely why your June 30th statement to the Toledo Blade—declaring that you “do not support boys playing in girls’ sports” and dismissing state-mandated exclusion as “settled law” that you will uphold—was such an alarming betrayal.

Reducing transgender girls to “boys” is not medical science; it adopts the deliberately dehumanizing rhetoric of extremist political movements seeking to isolate vulnerable children. We have watched with dismay as Democratic candidates like Rep. Marcy Kaptur join this race to the bottom with anti-trans campaign ad buys, while the Ohio Democratic Party apparatus actively silences dissent from its own Pride Caucus leaders. Leaders like Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear have proven that true leadership defends vulnerable youth without cowering to right-wing extremism. Even Republican Governor Mike DeWine vetoed House Bill 68 after listening to pediatricians and families; for a Democratic physician to position herself to the right of that veto is unconscionable.

Your words have life-or-death consequences for young Ohioans. According to Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) data, among nearly 350,000 Ohio student-athletes, only 17 transgender girls participated in sports over an eight-year period. There was never an athletic crisis in Ohio schools; there was a functional, medically monitored policy. Furthermore, claims of an inherent competitive advantage are directly contradicted by sports science: an IOC-funded 2024 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that transgender women athletes actually tested with lower relative lower-body strength and lung function compared to cisgender women, with no meaningful differences in bone density or hemoglobin. Yet the harm of state-sanctioned exclusion is tragically real: peer-reviewed research, including studies from the Trevor Project, confirms that anti-trans rhetoric and legislation correlate with up to a 72% increase in suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth.

Gender policing never stops with transgender people. Restricting who qualifies as female inevitably subjects cisgender women and girls—especially those whose natural builds or athletic strength deviate from stereotypical femininity—to suspicion, invasive surveillance, and humiliation.

The high stakes of this election demand moral courage and principled strategy. As Ohio’s only two openly transgender elected officials—Dion Manley of the Upper Arlington School Board and Amy Heutmaker, Trustee in Russell Township—stated, recognizing the high stakes of this election does not excuse your remarks. While many of us, the undersigned, will cast our ballots for you this November, we recognize that many trans Ohioans and allies will ultimately choose not to vote or volunteer for a candidate who erases trans identity. We are also horrified about the prospect of campaigns across the country interpreting an Acton win as a sign that all Democratic candidates must throw trans kids under the bus for political gain.

We similarly cannot understand or excuse your troubling remarks about local law enforcement cooperating with federal agencies, especially following the tragic suicide of 20-year-old Wright State student Pierre Damas Bel, who was fitted with an ICE ankle monitor following the revocation of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. In Central Ohio, our communities mobilized against the detention and deportation of Mohan Karki, a Bhutanese-Nepali refugee father in Blacklick torn from his infant daughter after 14 years of legal residence. In addition to defending qualified immunity to shield police officers from accountability, these statements on the campaign trail legitimize the destruction of Ohio families and threaten the bedrock base and multiracial coalition required to defeat the overt extremism of Vivek Ramaswamy.

Calling you in is an invitation to moral consistency. We urge you to immediately take the following actions:

• Retract and publicly apologize for misgendering transgender girls and legitimizing exclusionary legislation as “settled law.”
• Reaffirm your commitment to evidence-based medicine and public health, recognizing that the safety and dignity of transgender and intersex youth require affirmation and social inclusion.
• Rescind your support for qualified immunity and local police cooperation with ICE, standing unequivocally with Ohio's Haitian, Latine, Syrian, Bhutanese-Nepali, and broader immigrant communities facing state violence.
• Meet directly with Ohio's transgender elected officials, community leaders, and advocates rather than permitting party leadership to silence community dissent.

The mandate of a physician is to do no harm. The duty of a governor is to protect all who call Ohio home. We ask you to return to the integrity and evidence-based leadership that first earned our trust, and prove that no Ohioan’s humanity is up for negotiation.

A complete works-cited list of every source referenced in this letter is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pruZFahiSPSPpUHsra1bJy2e6JoSDxgKBrzf4HJaFn0/edit

Sincerely,

Concerned Ohioans for Intersectional Justice

[Your Petition Signers]