In a 6 to 3 vote, the United States Supreme Court upheld a law in Tennessee and 25 other states that bans gender transition care for minors. The law, which was put in place in 2023, restricts minors’ access to treatments including puberty blockers.
The Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee’s ban did not violate “U.S. constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law by discriminating on the basis of sex,” according to the BBC.
“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,” Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the decision, said. “SB1’s ban on such treatments responds directly to that uncertainty.”
Also known as SB1, the law bans a procedure that enables “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or that treats “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”
The case was filed by three Tennessee transgender teenagers, their parents, and a doctor who provides transition medications. The case, known as United States v Skrmetti, was the first of it’s kind.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the ruling arguing that “the ban violated a parent’s right to access necessary care for their children,” the BBC reported.
“[The Court] authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them,” Sotomayor, who wrote the dissent, said.
While Tennessee’s Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti applauds the ban because of the “irreversible” effects of such transitional treatments, transgender advocates, such as Human Rights Campaign (HRC), disagreed with the ruling arguing that treatments like puberty blockers are reversible and the ban will only pose more risks.
“This Court chose to allow politicians to interfere in medical decisions that should be made by doctors, patients, and families—a cruel betrayal of the children who needed them to stand up for justice when it mattered most,” Kelley Robinson, president of HRC, said.
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