The Supreme Court’s opinions and dissents in this case span 118 pages. That’s a lot to digest. All Rise News interviews the top experts to distill the breaking news in a fresh, accessible way, with a focus on the life or death stakes of the litigation.
If you are not yet a paid subscriber, support that mission, and don’t miss the next conversation.
A casual news consumer could be forgiven for believing that the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law that banned all gender-affirming care for minors, like hormone therapy and puberty blockers.
But that’s not so.
In an interview with University of Michigan Law Professor Leah Litman, All Rise News explores the “topsy-turvey” nature of the ruling that allows children to access these treatments for explicitly gender-affirming purposes, as long as it’s the one assigned to them at birth.
Toward the end of the interview, Litman noted that the Trump administration withdrew funding from the Trevor Project’s work for LGBTQ youth in crisis.
Find out about their work here.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted repeatedly throughout her dissent that the Tennessee law permits hormone therapy and puberty blockers for such treatments as hirsutism (male-patterned hair growth in women) and precocious puberty (a premature adolescence).
Professor Litman noted that this undercuts the stated concerns of Tennessee lawmakers about the safety issues surrounding the drugs and the thorny issue of informed consent involving minors.
“The state says, ‘Oh, we are concerned about the effects of this treatment,’ but you're totally fine with the effects of administering the exact same medication to treat other conditions,” Litman noted.
For the three liberal justices, the disconnect went to the crux of the equal protection claims at the heart of United States v. Skrmetti.
After Tennessee enacted the law in 2023, three families and a doctor sued, and the Justice Department intervened on their behalf in the waning days of the Biden administration. They said that the law, SB1, violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by denying certain medical care based on gender identity. The families won on the trial court level, only to be overturned on appeal.
The 6-3 conservative supermajority found that the law turned on age and medical use, not gender identity. That finding allowed the court to apply the lowest standard of scrutiny for the law’s constitutionality, known as a “rational basis review.”
In his lead opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that male or female children could access the same treatments to argue that gender identity was not the issue.
Litman roasted that reasoning as “topsy-turvy logic.”
“The law, after all, mentions ‘sex’ 19 times and restricts medical care and prohibits its availability based on whether an individual is trying to not live in accordance with their sex assigned at birth,” Litman said. “So that looks, sounds, talks, and walks like a sex distinction.”
Chief Justice Roberts acknowledged that the case “carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field,” noting that 20 states have passed laws like Tennessee’s.
“The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound,” he wrote.
But Litman pointed out that the safety, efficacy and propriety concerns the law purports to address are only aimed for transgender youth, for whom the stakes are highest.
Sotomayor recited the grim statistics in her dissent.
“Suicide, in particular, is a major concern for parents of transgender teenagers, as the lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts among transgender individuals may be as high as 40%,” she wrote. “Tragically, studies suggest that as many as one-third of transgender high school students attempt suicide in any given year.”
A day before the ruling, the Trump administration announced plans to cut funding for the LGBTQ youth option on the national suicide prevention hotline.
Watch the full video above for more detailed analysis.
Share this post