The justices seemed to embrace arguments for maintaining Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth.
A majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court appear supportive of keeping intact a Tennessee law that forbids gender-affirming treatment options for transgender youth.
Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care, often referred to as SB1, restricts health care providers from issuing trans children prescriptions for puberty blockers or hormone treatments. It also bans surgeries for transgender minors, a treatment option that is only used on older teenagers and only in extreme situations, typically after several years of therapy.
Twenty-six states in the U.S. currently have bans or restrictions on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and in some cases, for trans adults, too.
The Tennessee law does not forbid the same treatment options when they are being used by cisgender children in the state for other health needs. The discrepancy prompted children, their family members and their health care providers to file a lawsuit against the law. The case, titled U.S. v. Skrmetti, was argued by ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio at the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Strangio made history by being the first openly trans person to argue a case before the court, doing so for around 40 minutes. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the federal government, also argued before the court in support of blocking the ban. Tennessee Solicitor General J. Matthew Rice spoke on behalf of Tennessee lawmakers in favor of keeping the ban in place.
Strangio and Prelogar argued that the ban amounted to sex-based discrimination, in violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Because the law barred doctors from prescribing transgender youth medications that could be used by cisgender peers for other health issues, they argued, the law was discriminatory on the basis of sex.
“SB1 has taken away the only treatment that relieved years of suffering for each of the plaintiffs,” Strangio said in his statements.
Gender-affirming treatments aren’t just safe, but are also overwhelmingly viewed by the medical community as being potentially life-saving — a point that Strangio himself noted in a personal essay for Truthout in 2021.
