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CV NEWS FEED // The Supreme Court on Wednesday began hearing arguments in the case of U.S. v. Skrmetti, which deals with a Tennessee law that protects children from being subjected to sexual treatments and surgeries in the name of “transgender medicine.”
The case was first brought forward by the parents of three youths identifying as “transgender.” The parents claimed the Tennessee law violates the 14th Amendment and Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The legislation is a formal law known as SB1 which discourages and prohibits medical professionals from performing surgeries on children’s genitalia or prescribing development-disruptive hormonal drugs to minors in the state of Tennessee.
U.S. v. Skrmetti was previously heard by Federal District Court Judge Eli Richardson, who determined that SB1 violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14 Amendment. Richardson claimed that so-called “gender-affirming treatments” are “safe, effective, and comparable in both risk profile and efficacy to many other forms of pediatric medicine that Tennessee permits.”
The Republican Attorney General of Tennessee, John Skrmetti, appealed the judgment of the district court, which then passed the case to the Sixth Circuit Court of the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Sixth Circuit Court subsequently reversed the original judgment, upholding the Tennessee law. The Biden-Harris administration then picked up the case and appealed it to the Supreme Court.
Roughly 23 states have laws similar to Tennessee’s, and the case has drawn national attention as its outcome could have widespread legal ramifications for elected officials who favor protecting minors from “transgender” treatments and surgeries.
Republican states such as Alabama, Missouri, Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Wyoming, Alaska, Louisiana, and Georgia filed amicus curiae (“friend of the court” briefs) in support of Skrmetti and SB1.
Democratic states such as California, Vermont, New York, Oregon, Hawai’i, Massachusetts, and Washington, District of Columbia, meanwhile, filed briefs in support of the Biden-Harris administration, backing the case for subjecting children to so-called “transgender medicine.”
Organizations such as the American Psychological Association (APA) and National Advancement for the Association of Colored People (NAACP) also filed amicus briefs against Tennessee, advocating for “unobstructed access to healthcare and evidence-based inclusive, clinical care for transgender, gender diverse, and nonbinary individuals.”
During the hearing, as reported by the Guardian, Biden-Harris Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that medical care and treatments that are not available for “gender-affirming care” are available for those who suffer from other, uncontroversial conditions in Tennesee. Prolegar suggested that Tennessee’s law constituted a form of sex-based discrimination:
The law restricts medical care only when provided to induce physical effects inconsistent with birth sex. Someone assigned female at birth can’t receive medication to live as a male, but someone assigned male can. If you change the individual sex, it changes the result. That’s a facial sex classification – full stop – and a law like that can’t stand on bare rationality.
Chief Justice John Roberts suggested during the hearing that the medical ramifications of such treatments on children should be considered.
“It seems to me that the medical issues are much more heavily involved than in many of the cases that you look to,” Roberts told Prolegar. “And if that’s true, doesn’t that make a stronger case for us to leave those determinations to the legislative bodies rather than try to determine them for ourselves?”
More liberal justices such as Justice Katanji Brown Jackson did not share Roberts’ view and doubled down on opposing the Tennessee law.
Jackson raised eyebrows, in fact, by comparing the Tennessee law with Jim Crow laws and the case Loving v. Virginia, which attempted to prevent interracial marriage.
“They sound like the same kind of arguments that were made back in the day,” Jackson said,
1950s, 60s, with regard to racial classifications and inconsistencies. I am thinking in particular about Loving and I wonder if whether you have thought about the parallels because I see one as to how this statute operates, and how the anti-miscegenation statutes in Virginia operated.
Tennessee Solicitor General Matt Rice also weighed in during the hearing, indicating that there was no “sex-based line” included in the Tennessee law.
“In this case, the only way that they can point to a sex-based line is to equate fundamentally different medical treatments,” stated Rice. “Giving testosterone to a boy with a deficiency is not the same treatment as giving it to a girl who has psychological distress associated with her body.”
Jackson challenged Rice: “I took the SG to be saying that it operates on the body in the same way, what’s your basis for saying they’re not the same?”
“I don’t think it operates on the body in the same way,” Rice answered. “Take testosterone. If you give a boy with a deficiency testosterone because he has constitutional delayed puberty, that allows him to go through and develop the reproductive organs associated with being a male. If you give it to a girl, it renders the girl infertile.”
Following the oral arguments, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Chase Strangio, a woman who claims to be a man and is representing the minors and their parents in court, appeared on CNN to discuss the case. Strangio argued that even children who cannot fully consent to medical treatments should be given hormone therapy and puberty blockers if they indicate wanting the treatment, as long as the parents consent.
Strangio also claimed that children as young as two years old know who they are and fully understand the ramifications of puberty blockers and hormone therapy while suffering from gender dysphoria.
“These are not doctors being forced to provide this medication, these are doctors who are wanting to treat their patients in the best way that they know how, based on the best available evidence to us,” claimed Strangio. “And these are young people who may have known since they were two years old exactly who they are, who suffered for six or seven years before they had any relief.”
Strangio stated that the state of Tennessee had “displaced their judgment” in determining what parents could consent to for the care of their children.
“I think that‘s one of the things we should be really concerned about,” said Strangio. “We‘re hearing a lot about young people who can‘t consent to this care, but it is their parents consenting to this care.”
The attorney also argued that child-protective policies are “excising” transgender people from the United States. “At the end of the day,” she said, “we have adults who live as transgender people, people like myself, who have families who are part of communities, who are part of this society. And if the incoming administration bans our healthcare, that is essentially excising us from this country.”
