June 24, 2024
The medical care of transgender young people is now going to be decided on by the United States supreme court.
The justices announced today that they would hear oral arguments in the case of united states vs Skrmetti. Skrmetti is Jonathan Skrmetti the Attorney General of the state of Tennessee. Last year the states legislature passed senate bill one which prohibits *all* “medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” and ban medical professionals from treating “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.” Basically this law bans doctors from providing medical care, like puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries, to transgender people under the age of 18. The Biden administration and three transgendered teenagers and their parents sued saying this law is unconstitutional …it’s a violation of the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause and they wanted the courts to step in. Well — the sixth circuit court of appeals ruled against them – saying the law does not discriminate based on sex and allowed the law to take effect.
The dept. Of justice appealed to the supreme court and today the justices agreed to hear the case. Not only does the Biden administration argue the law is unconstitutional but on top of that they say it’s hypocritical. They argue the law allows for a teenager whose sex was assigned male at birth to be prescribed testosterone to conform to a male gender identity, but does not allow a teenager assigned female at birth to have that same prescription. DOJ’s appeal goes through the real medical repercussions of not allowing someone who is transgendered to be properly treated and also argues that these gender affirming treatments aren’t just given out willy nilly. They required comprehensive assessment to ensure any intervention is medically necessary. DOJ says not treating someone who is in desperate need of intervention can cause serious psychological harm, depression, substance abuse and suicide. They say the court needs to intervene now because Tennessee isn’t the only state with a law like they say at least 18 other states are doing or have done the same thing.
The Tennessee lawmakers who support this bill call these types of treatments “barbaric” saying these treatments should be stopped because they have unproven benefits and lifelong harms.
For his part, the Attorney General of Tennessee has been defending this law since it was enacted in 2023 saying on X today — “we fought hard to defend Tennessee’s law protecting kids from irreversible gender treatments and secured a thoughtful and well-reasoned opinion from the sixth circuit. I look forward to finishing the fight in the United States supreme court. This case will bring much-needed clarity to whether the constitution contains special protections for gender identity.”
The supreme court will hear this case during the next term which starts in October.
Read the appeal here.
