The 5 Most Infuriating Takeaways From Supreme Court Arguments on Trans Kids’ Medical Care
While the U.S. v. Skrmetti is nominally about gender-affirming care for minors, it could actually open a Pandora's box of medical discrimination. The lawyer for Tennessee even compared gender-affirming care to lobotomies.
Photo: Getty Images Politics
On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court heard arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, a lawsuit over whether Tennessee can ban gender-affirming care for minors, but the case has much broader implications for medical care.
Tennessee’s Senate Bill 1 prohibits doctors from prescribing puberty blockers or hormone therapy to transgender kids whose parents consent to the treatment, while allowing cisgender children to use the same medications. The ACLU and the Biden Department of Justice argue that SB 1 is clear sex discrimination because a minor assigned male at birth can take testosterone, while a minor assigned female cannot. Tennessee, meanwhile, claims the law isn’t discriminatory because it focuses on the medical reason the drugs are prescribed and, in its majestic equality, bans both trans girls and boys from taking them.
The stakes here are huge since a ruling saying that a ban on medical care isn’t sex discrimination could impact care for trans adults, and other kinds of care like birth control and IVF.
Arguments lasted nearly two and a half hours, which made it all the more surprising that Justice Neil Gorsuch didn’t ask a single question. Gorsuch wrote the 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which said employment decisions based on gender identity are sex discrimination under the law — specifically, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. This challenge is under a different statute, the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, but Bostock came up multiple times and Gorsuch couldn’t be bothered to chime in.
Here’s what else happened today.
The fallout of Dobbs continues
Advocates warned that the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision that overturned Roe v. Wade could imperil other liberty rights, like marriage equality and the ability to use birth control. Now conservatives are using it to attack trans rights as well. Tennessee’s brief in the case cites Dobbs as a reason why the state can “regulate” this medical care (it’s a ban but they won’t call it that).
Justice Samuel Alito told the DOJ’s lawyer, Elizabeth Prelogar, that the Dobbs opinion — which he wrote — said that equal protection doesn’t apply when talking about medical conditions or procedures associated with just one sex. But experts have noted that equal protection claims weren’t an official question in Dobbs and Alito just went rogue by including that in the final opinion. And now he’s citing himself in this different case.
And in a redux of the “send abortion back to the states” argument, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who is desperate to be liked and viewed as moderate, argued that states should be able to pass their own laws lest transgender healthcare be “constitutionalized.”
Alito continued to be the court’s chief troll
Alito, a man who is less interested in law than in owning the libs, remains the preeminent troll on the court. Not only did he cite his own dubious Dobbs opinion, but he also sneeringly invoked restrictions on gender-affirming care in the U.K. and Sweden, which importantly do not impose blanket bans on this care for all minors. He was particularly upset that Prelogar didn’t give prominence to the notorious Cass Report in the government’s opening brief — he said that she “relegated” it to a footnote. The U.K.’s National Health Service commissioned the 2024 report which contradicted more than 100 existing studies that found there are benefits to gender-affirming care for minors. Prelogar emphasized multiple times that, despite this report, no European country has banned this care like Tennessee and more than 20 other states have.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
