On Wednesday, the US Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender affirming care for transgender minors. The Court decided that Tennessee’s 2023 ban on medical professionals from providing hormone therapy or puberty-delaying drugs to transgender minors does not violate the Constitution’s 14th Amendment promise of equal protection, as challengers to the law argued.
The court, currently dominated by Republican-appointed conservative justices, voted 6-3 decision in United States v. Skrmetti to roll back protections for transgender people and minors. Three transgender teenagers from Tennessee, their parents, and a doctor who provides gender affirming care argued that Tennessee’s ban violated the equal protection clause by discriminating on the basis of sex and transgender status.
The majority rejected the arguments, with only the court’s three liberal justices dissenting from the decision. The decision will effectively protect Trump’s administration and individual state governments from legal challenges associated with the reversal of protections for transgender people. The decision will have nationwide consequences for gender rights, and could bolster efforts by different states to defend measures that target transgender people. 25 states already have similar laws that ban gender transition care for young people.
Under the Trump administration, transgender rights have become a major talking point, as he seeks to eradicate “radical gender ideology.” The Supreme Court decision comes as another blow to trans rights nationwide. Chase Strangio, a transgender American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented some of the challengers in the case, called the ruling “a devastating loss for transgender people, our families, and everyone who cares about the Constitution.”
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court’s majority, “Tennessee concluded that there is an ongoing debate among medical experts regarding the risks and benefits associated with administering puberty blockers and hormones to treat gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, and gender incongruence. [The law’s] ban on such treatments responds directly to that uncertainty.” Gender dysphoria is the term for the psychological distress that can result from an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and the sex assigned at birth.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti welcomed Wednesday’s ruling, saying that the state legislature had “voted to protect kids from irreversible decisions they cannot yet fully understand.” The idea that this type of ban is necessary because of the “irreversible” nature of gender-transition treatments is inaccurate, as drugs like puberty blockers are fully reversible. Studies consistently show that banning access to that care poses more risks for families and transgender individuals. The SUpreme Court’s decision aligns with Trump’s agenda, which critics at the ACLU say is to “make anti-trans discrimination legal in every context it can find”
