State laws banning transgender medical procedures on minors do not violate the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled against a lawsuit seeking to strike down a Tennessee state law prohibiting performing transgender medical procedures, such as puberty blockers and hormone treatments, on minors.
By upholding the ban, the Supreme Court affirmed that states have the constitutional right to pass laws protecting children from irreversible transgender medical interventions.
Tennessee has the right to protect minors from obtaining medical procedures that carry “risks, including irreversible sterility, increased risk of disease and illness, and adverse psychological consequences,” since they lack the maturity to make, and may later come to regret, such life-altering decisions, the High Court ruled.
Be informed, not misled.
“Childhood is not a social experiment, MRCTV and MRC Culture Senior Director Eric Scheiner noted, reacting to the decision: “Today’s ruling solidifies that it’s illegal to medically transition a child in Tennessee. A precedent has been set. Childhood is not a social experiment. If you’re too young to get a tattoo, you’re too young for genital mutilation; it’s common sense.”
It’s not a court’s job to decide scientific disputes based on the opinion of “self-described experts,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion: "In politically contentious debates over matters shrouded in scientific uncertainty, courts should not assume that self-described experts are correct."
In the 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Samuel Alito concurred with the ruling, while liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
The Epoch Times said, "In a 6–3 decision also released yesterday, the court disagreed with the Biden administration’s argument that the law should face higher legal scrutiny than had been applied by an appeals court."
"The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had upheld Tennessee’s law, stating that it passed something known as 'rational basis' review, which is a relatively low level of scrutiny to determine whether the law is constitutional," they said.
President Biden's Administration had said the law constituted a form of sex-based discrimination.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that the law didn’t classify individuals on the basis of sex and therefore didn’t force courts to apply greater scrutiny. Instead, the majority said, the law classified individuals according to age.
Sotomayor, who penned the primary dissent, disagreed. “Tennessee’s law expressly classifies on the basis of sex and transgender status, so the Constitution and settled precedent require the Court to subject it to intermediate scrutiny,” she said.
The case was perhaps the most hotly anticipated for the term. Besides touching on a hot-button issue, it prompted the justices to reconsider their 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, wherein the court held that employers violate the Civil Rights Act by firing an individual “merely for being gay or transgender.” More specifically, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that type of firing was effectively based on an individual’s sex.
The Biden administration had attempted to apply that reasoning to say that Tennessee’s law discriminated on the basis of sex. Roberts disagreed in his majority opinion and said that the Bostock case didn’t apply to the decision before them.
Tennessee’s law, known as Senate Bill 1, prohibits health care providers from administering puberty blockers or hormones for the purpose of “enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or “treating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”
It also contains a provision banning surgical procedures, like those altering minors’ organs, but that portion was not at issue by the time the Supreme Court reviewed the case.
On social media, Attorney General Pam Bondi praised the Supreme Court’s ruling as allowing “states to protect vulnerable children from genital mutilation and other so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ that leaves children permanently disfigured and scarred.”
She also encouraged other states to follow Tennessee’s lead. “This Department of Justice will continue its fight to protect America’s children and parental rights,” she said.
Takeaway
Under the Biden administration, the department opposed Tennessee’s law. That changed, however, after President Donald Trump entered office, and his deputy solicitor general said the previous administration’s position was no longer the United States’ position.
Seven major U.S. medical groups, including the American Psychiatric Association and the Endocrine Society, released a joint statement expressing disappointment with the ruling. “Every patient should have access to the medical care they need," they said.
Taxpayer-funded PBS reacted: "The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors, a stunning setback to transgender rights."
The justices’ 6-3 decision in a case from Tennessee effectively protects from legal challenges many efforts by President Donald Trump’s Republican administration and state governments to roll back protections for transgender people. Another 26 states have laws similar to the one in Tennessee.
Going forward, Tennessee and 26 other states will be protecting our children from the wiles of the LGBTQ movement and their accomplices in the medical field who are cashing in on the so-called "affirming care."
This is a win.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.