By Matthew Vadum
Contributing Writer
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a challenge by the federal government to a Tennessee law that prohibits the use of puberty blockers and medical treatments for minors who identify as transgender.
The decision comes as several states have enacted legislation regarding transgender individuals’ treatments, participation in school sports, use of gender-specific bathrooms, and drag shows.
The court granted the petition for certiorari, or review, in United States v. Skrmetti, in an unsigned order. Jonathan T. Skrmetti is Tennessee’s Republican attorney general.
No justices dissented. The court did not explain its decision. At least four of the nine justices must vote to grant a petition for it to move forward.
The federal government filed a petition with the Supreme Court on Nov. 6, 2023, asking the justices to review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit that upheld Tennessee Senate Bill 1, which forbids all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a [disagreement] between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued in the petition that the legislation violates the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The problem with the Tennessee law, according to Prelogar, is that it “does not merely ensure informed consent or otherwise regulate the covered treatments” but “categorically forbids them … in explicitly sex-based terms.”
The affected treatments are banned if they are prescribed for the purpose of enabling a minor “to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat discomfort related to a conflict between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.
But at the same time, the legislation does not affect treatments if they are prescribed “for any other purpose.”
This means a teenager born male can be prescribed testosterone but a teenager born female cannot, she wrote in the petition.
A federal district court temporarily blocked enforcement of the law. Other courts have also held that similar laws trigger a more intensive level of judicial scrutiny because they discriminate based on “sex and transgender status,” she wrote.
The district court determined that Tennessee’s ban on “evidence-based treatments supported by the overwhelming consensus of the medical community” was unconstitutional.
But a divided panel of the 6th Circuit disagreed and reversed.
At least 24 states have passed legislation banning transgender surgery for minors, according to the Movement Advancement Project. On the other hand, 15 states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation protecting youth access to transgender medical treatment, according to the group.
Oral argument in the case is expected to take place in the court’s new term that begins in October.
