Tennessee’s attorney general plans to defend the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors in the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday against prosecutors who say the 2023 law endangers children.
While lawyers for the plaintiffs say the law violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said lawmakers took “measurable action” in 2023 by banning gender-affirming child care to protect them from “irreversible, unconfirmed medical procedures.”
“Legislators have recognized that there is little credible evidence to justify the serious risks these procedures pose to young people, and have joined a growing number of European countries in restricting their use for minors with gender identity issues,” Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said ahead of oral arguments before the Supreme Court in Washington
One of Tennessee’s main claims is that the constitution does not prohibit states from regulating medical practices involving “pressing social issues.” First of all, the state says the law does not discriminate based on gender.
But a father leading a legal challenge against Tennessee’s law said the ban on gender-sensitive medical care poses an “active threat” to his daughter’s future.
“It violates not only her freedom to be herself, but also the love of our family,” her father said Monday morning at an online news conference. He said his daughter began taking puberty-suppressing drugs and then hormone therapy at age 13, after just nine months of conversations and consultations with experts and doctors, and is “happy and healthy” as she prepares for college.
Another father, a lobbyist from Ohio who identified himself as a Republican at a press conference, said his son came close to suicide in 2012 before beginning the years-long process of gender reassignment.
“I have learned one thing: being transgender is a fact, and if it is real, in my opinion it transcends any political ideology,” the man said.
Three families of transgender children, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Tennessee, Lambda Legal and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, claim Tennessee’s law violates their constitutional right to equal protection under the law. The plaintiffs also include Dr. Susan Lacy of Memphis.
Chase Strangio, an ACLU attorney, said Tennessee banned hormone therapy and puberty-delaying drugs in children only when they were prescribed to enable teenagers to live and identify with a gender “inconsistent” with their sex at birth, a violation of their rights.
“We are simply asking the Supreme Court to recognize that when a law treats people differently because of their sex, the same principles of equal protection apply regardless of whether the group affected by the law is transgender,” Strangio said.
Sasha Buchert of Lambda Legal said the outcome of the case will determine whether families will continue to have the freedom to make medical decisions with doctors. Otherwise, “unqualified politicians will step into the shoes of families and health care workers to make these decisions in a way that undermines the care, safety and dignity of transgender youth,” Buchert said.
Buchert said the argument goes beyond access to gender-affirming care, which has been restricted in 24 states, to whether courts will uphold decades of legal precedent affirming that a state must “demonstrate its work in choosing to discriminate based on on gender.” “
“The issue is whether politicians can limit access to treatment in order to impose their narrow, harmful and stereotypical view of gender,” Buchert said.
Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson of Franklin and House Majority Leader William Lamberth of Portland filed a bill to ban gender-affirming care in 2023 after right-wing media reported that Vanderbilt University Medical Center was providing treatment to children. The hospital said it does not perform surgery on minors.
Johnson and several other lawmakers introduced the bill at a Capitol rally that included hate groups. It passed the Legislature largely along party lines, although three Democrats in the House voted for it.
In a brief filed before the Supreme Court, Skrmetti maintained his argument, saying that European countries that had pioneered gender-affirming treatments had begun to back away due to concerns about safety and effectiveness. The report said Tennessee lawmakers considered European restrictions and heard accounts of “pathetic and hurtful” people who reverted to their original gender.
Skrmetti’s documents show that the federal government, which has joined the legal battle on the plaintiffs’ side, is trying to override Tennessee law “by writing its preferred principles into the Constitution.” The attorney general’s position paper states that Senate Bill 1 does not include a gender classification and distinguishes between minors seeking sex-change drugs and those seeking treatment for other medical reasons.
Plaintiffs in the case claim that the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned a lower court’s decision to block the law, failed to consider the case under “enhanced review,” the legal standard for assessing constitutionality based on characteristics such as gender.
However, Skrmetti’s testimony suggests that the court should reject such a “doctrinal revolution” because sex is not “a unique cause of SB1’s age- and use-based restrictions.”
