James M. Cantor, Ph.D.

Cases and documents

The documents are listed as the archive holds them. A document labeled with its kind alone, such as "Expert report", is one the archive attributes to the expert. One labeled "Mentions or contains" names the expert or includes the expert's testimony, and is not attributed to the expert.

How courts have treated their testimony

Each ruling that discusses their testimony, by what it did for the side that called them. The counts are the profile's own, for the rulings it lists.

Not in the archive: 1) Eknes-Tucker/Boe v. Marshall: the panel and en banc opinions reference the district court's post-trial findings (Eknes-Tucker I, 603 F. Supp. 3d 1128, and later permanent-injunction proceedings after the 2024 trial, for which extensive Cantor expert reports exist in this folder's reports/index.json but no corresponding court ruling text is in orders/). 2) L.W. v. Skrmetti: the Sixth Circuit's own appellate opinion (which went on to the Supreme Court as United States v. Skrmetti) is not in this folder -- only the M.D. Tenn. district court's preliminary-injunction memorandum (reprinted as an exhibit in the Sixth Circuit record) is present; any separate circuit-court or Supreme Court discussion of Cantor's testimony specifically is not captured here. 3) Bridge v. Oklahoma: the court's eventual ruling on the underlying preliminary-injunction motion (as opposed to this discovery/motion-to-strike order) is not in this folder, so any assessment of Cantor's affidavit on the merits is not_found.

Cases and roles

Also named in these cases' filings, though the archive holds no testimony of their attributed to them: Poe, et al. v. Labrador, et al.; Fairfax County School Board v. Linda McMahon; West Virginia v. B.P.J.; B.P.J. v. WV Secondary School Activities Commission; Poe v. Drummond.

Typical stance

Under cross-examination

Their own answers in depositions.

Testimony that travels

Sentences that appear word for word in their filings in different cases.

• “Gender identity refers to subjective feelings that cannot be defined, measured, or verified by science.” in 3 documents: 101957, 114778, 114263
• “Cases of adult-onset gender dysphoria are typically associated with a sexual interest pattern involving themselves in female form (a paraphilia called autogynephilia).” in 3 documents: 114263, 101957, 114778
• “the majority cease to want to be the other gender over the course of puberty—ranging from 61–88% desistance across the large, prospective studies.” in 3 documents: 102385, 114263, 101957
• “Cases commonly appear to occur within clusters of peers in association with increased social media use” in 3 documents: 114263, 101957, 114778
• “Systematic reviews of safety and effectiveness have been conducted by the health care ministries/departments of several governments. They unanimously concluded the evidence on medicalized transition in minors to be of poor quality.” in 2 documents: 101957, 114778
• “Although I accept as an axiom that good public policy must be consistent with the scientific evidence, science cannot objectively assess societal values and priorities.” in 3 documents: 101957, 114263, 114778

Curriculum vitae

Named at oral argument

Lawyers or judges mentioning them at argument; not rulings.

• K.C. v. Individual Members of the Medical Licensing Board (2024): During oral argument, the state's counsel (responding to a judge's question about reversibility of puberty blockers) refers to declarations by "Dr. Ruse and Dr. Cantor" as pointing out debate over reversibility. This is counsel's characterization of the record, not a judicial finding about Cantor's testimony. transcript↗(opens another site)

What the parties argued about them

Party filings, not rulings: motions, briefs and proposed findings.

• A.M. v. Indianapolis Public Schools (2022): This is the State's brief moving to exclude Plaintiff's expert James Fortenberry; it is not a ruling on Cantor. The State repeatedly cites Cantor's own declaration as authority for claiming Fortenberry ignored contrary studies and relied on low-quality sources. No court assessment of Cantor appears in this document. filing

Sources and method

Built from the litigation archive: 2 excerpts of opinions and oral arguments and 20 court documents that name them, and 42 filings of their own. Every mention was checked for identity (1 mention of other people with the same surname was set aside). Every quote on this page (42) was checked word for word against its source. Profile version 1. Gaps: Coverage is uneven across the 14 cases in payload.json. Solid, text-verified support (his own expert report/declaration text, including CV, compensation statement, and self-reported testimony-count admissions) exists only for Boe v. Marshall, Sexuality and Gender Alliance v. Critchfield, and Voe v. Mansfield. For B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education and Misanin v. Wilson, his role is confirmed only indirectly (an opposing Daubert motion quoting his deposition, and a rebutting expert's declaration responding to his declaration, respectively); no text of his own filing in those two cases was locally retrievable. For A.M. v. Indianapolis Public Schools, only a court order and an opposing brief are available (both describe him as the State's/defendant's expert), not his own declaration. For Paul Eknes-Tucker v. Governor of Alabama, the only corroboration is his own CV's self-reported EXPERT WITNESS TESTIMONY list entry (2022 Eknes-Tucker v Alabama, Montgomery Cnty, AL); no report text for that case itself was retrievable. For six cases -- Poe, et al. v. Labrador; Fairfax County School Board v. Linda McMahon; United States v. Skrmetti; West Virginia v. B.P.J.; B.P.J. v. WV Secondary School Activities Commission; and Poe v. Drummond -- no text of any Cantor-authored document, and in most cases no text confirming his role at all, could be found locally; payload.json associates these cases with him via document indexing/mentions only. In particular, the Skrmetti and West Virginia v. B.P.J. entries point to SCOTUS amici curiae briefs by other named lead signers (Isabelle Ayala et al. and Billy Burleigh et al.), and it could not be established locally whether Cantor is even a signer of those briefs, let alone a retained litigation expert, versus simply being cited in them. For Dekker v. Weida, the single recovered document mentions Cantor only once, in passing, in connection with a different case (B.P.J. v. West Virginia), so his involvement in Dekker itself is not established from local files and may be a false-positive association from the payload's mention-based indexing. No document in this corpus states, in Cantor's own words, which party retained him in any given case; 'retained_by' values above are either 'not established' or inferred from case captions and opposing filings, never from his own statement of retention. His CV's compensation statement ($400/hour, flat) recurs verbatim in at least three of his reports/declarations checked (Boe v. Marshall, Sexuality and Gender Alliance v. Critchfield, and Voe v. Mansfield); it was not independently checked for the cases lacking his own filing text. Two versions of his CV appear in the corpus (a '21 cases in the past four years' version filed May 2024 in Boe v. Marshall, and a '33 cases in the past four years' version filed October 2024 in Voe v. Mansfield); the full itemized 'EXPERT WITNESS TESTIMONY' list attached to the earlier CV names about 29 prior matters (2010-2023, including several criminal and civil-commitment proceedings unrelated to transgender rights), which was not reproduced here in full to keep quotes short.