Supreme Court will hear gender-affirming care ban case. It could change everything for trans rights.

Earlier today, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear a case about a ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors in Tennessee.

The case, United States v. Skrmetti, concerns three families affected by Tennessee’s 2023 gender-affirming care ban, S.B. 1. The bill restricts all gender-affirming care for transgender minors, imposing civil penalties on doctors who don’t follow it. The Supreme Court will decide on this case in the fall during the presidential election.

Related:

Supreme Court allows Idaho’s gender-affirming care ban to go into effect

The decision may spell bad news for trans children and their doctors.

This case, depending on how the Supreme Court rules, will determine the fate of gender-affirming care bans in states across the country, with the potential to affect other transgender rights issues.

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“While this case focuses on criminal bans on access to gender-affirming care for trans youth, the broader implications for a ruling on equal protection grounds are immense,” transgender advocate and clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic Alejandra Caraballo told LGBTQ Nation. 

“A ruling finding that government policies targeting trans people are only subject to rational basis review opens the door to sweeping government-sanctioned discrimination such as bans on bathroom usage, gender marker changes, usage of pronouns, and gendered dress codes that only need a thin veneer of pretense to pass constitutional muster.”

The Supreme Court has not been consistent on transgender rights issues. The Court has previously supported anti-discrimination measures for transgender individuals in the 2019 case Bostock v. Clayton County, which has been cited in legal battles around the country. In April, they allowed a gender-affirming care ban from Idaho to go into effect. However, that ruling did not address the legal merit of the ban itself.

Both the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is representing the plaintiffs in this case, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed separate writs of certiorari in November of last year after the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, overturned a lower court’s restriction on the ban, allowing it to go into law.

The Supreme Court has often refused to hear cases concerning transgender issues. However, legal analysts have expected the court to take on a case about gender-affirming care bans this year.

“The future of countless transgender youth in this and future generations rests on this Court adhering to the facts, the Constitution, and its own modern precedent,” said Chase Strangio, deputy director for Transgender Justice at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, in a press release. “These bans represent a dangerous and discriminatory affront to the well-being of transgender youth across the country and their Constitutional right to equal protection under the law”

“They are the result of an openly political effort to wage war on a marginalized group and our most fundamental freedoms. We want transgender people and their families across the country to know we will spare nothing in our defense of you, your loved ones, and your right to decide whether to get this medical care.”

“This Court has historically rejected efforts to uphold discriminatory laws, and without similar action here, these punitive, categorical bans on the provision of gender-affirming care will continue to wreak havoc on the lives of transgender youth and their families,” said Tara Borelli, senior counsel at Lambda Legal, in the press release. 

“We are grateful that transgender youth and their families will have their day in the highest court, and we will not stop fighting to ensure access to this life-saving, medically necessary care.”

The plaintiffs in the case are the three families affected by the care, and they are represented by American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Tennessee, Lambda Legal, and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. The defendants are Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and his staff. They are represented by Lawfair LLC and Consovoy McCarthy PLLC.

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