Breaking: In a recent interview, the U.S. Supreme Court detailed its rationale for upholding Tennessee’s law that prohibits gender-affirming care for minors.

Breaking: In a recent interview, the U.S. Supreme Court detailed its rationale for upholding Tennessee’s law that prohibits gender-affirming care for minors.

 

The US Supreme Court issued an opinion on Wednesday upholding a 2023 Tennessee law restricting minors’ access to gender affirming care in the state.

 

The 2023 Tennessee law, called SB1, prohibits medical procedures that alter a minor’s hormonal balance, remove a minor’s sex organs, or other change a minor’s physical appearance when undergone with purpose of enabling a minor to identify with an identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex, or treating discomfort from discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity. The law emphasizes that it only prohibits the medical procedures when the purpose is for gender-affirming reasons.

 

Shortly before the law was supposed to take effect in 2023, three Tennessee families who have transgender children and one physician brought suit against the state of Tennessee. The plaintiffs argued that the Tennessee law violated their Equal Protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment because the law classifies on the basis of sex and discriminates against transgender persons. The Biden Administration ended up joining the plaintiffs in their action, and the case later became known as US v. Skrmetti.

 

The district court originally blocked the law, calling it unconstitutional, but in a tight decision, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed, allowing the law to become effective as proceedings continued. The Supreme Court approved the plaintiff’s writ of certiorari and, in a 6-3 decision, upheld the law. Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion, which is joined in or concurred with by all of the conservative justices, states that the Court has decided this law sets age- and use-based limits on medical care and exercises the states’ authority to regulate medicine. Therefore, this law must be reviewed under rational basis review, which passes.

 

Chief Justice Roberts concludes his opinion with a statement on the Supreme Court’s role in policy debates in the US:

 

The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound. The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements. Nor does it afford us license to decide them as we see best. Our role is not “to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic” of the law before us, but only to ensure that it does not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. Having concluded it does not, we leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives, and the democratic process.

 

In a dissent joined by the other two liberal justices, Kagan and Jackson, Justice Sotomayor writes that she wholly disagrees with the majority’s use of rational basis review to analyze this law. She states this law discriminates against transgender adolescents and should have been held to intermediate scrutiny for this reason. Justice Sotomayor warns of the dangers that leaving the rights of transgender persons in the hands of a “political whim.”

 

The decision comes amid the strongly polarized debate over transgender rights in the US after multiple states have enacted similar laws to SB1 and laws relating to the restriction of transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports.