The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in just its second major transgender rights case, a challenge to a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming care for minors.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in its second major transgender rights case, which is a challenge to a Tennessee law that prohibits gender-affirming care for minors.
The judges' decision, not expected for several months, could affect similar laws enacted by 25 other states and a variety of other efforts to regulate the lives of transgender people, including the sports competitions they can join. and the bathrooms they can use.
The case will be heard before a conservative-dominated court after a presidential election in which Donald Trump and his allies vowed to roll back protections for transgender people.
Four years ago, the court ruled in favor of Aimee Stephens, who was fired by a Michigan funeral home after she informed its owner that she was a transgender woman. The court held that transgender people, as well as gays and lesbians, are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace.
The Biden administration and the families and health care providers who challenged the Tennessee law are urging the justices to apply the same type of analysis that the majority, made up of liberal and conservative justices, adopted in the case four years ago when it found that “sex plays an unequivocal role” in employers' decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behaviors they would otherwise tolerate.
The issue in the Tennessee case is whether the law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same.
Tennessee law prohibits puberty blockers and hormonal treatments for transgender minors, but not “in all cases,” lawyers for the families wrote in their brief to the Supreme Court. The lead attorney, Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, is the first openly transgender person to argue before the justices.
The administration maintains that there is no way to determine whether “treatments should be denied to a particular minor” without regard to the minor's sex.
“That is sex discrimination,” Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in her main court filing.
The state recognizes that the same treatments that are prohibited for transgender minors can be prescribed for other reasons. But it rejects the claim that it is discriminating on the basis of sex. Instead, it says lawmakers acted to protect minors from the risks of “life-altering gender transition procedures.”
The law “draws a line between minors seeking medications for gender transition and minors seeking medications for other medical purposes. “And boys and girls fall on both sides of that line,” the attorney general wrote. Tennessee, Jonathan Skrmetti, in the state Supreme Court brief.