The Supreme Court dealt a major blow to transgender ideology on Wednesday when it upheld Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors who believe they are transgender. While the 6-3 ruling was a major victory for common sense and biological reality, it also mirrored the divide in American culture over transgenderism – and the growing majority of Americans who reject it outright.
The case, United States v. Skrmetti, centered on a 2023 Tennessee law that affirms that the state has a “legitimate, substantial, and compelling interest in encouraging minors to appreciate their sex, particularly as they undergo puberty.” Accordingly, the law bans prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors, except in cases where such treatments have a legitimate medical purpose, such as precocious puberty or for individuals who are born intersex.
Several minors who claim transgender status, their parents, and healthcare providers challenged the law in court. They argued that it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which says that no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Specifically, the challengers said that the law discriminated on the basis of sex.
Two district courts granted temporary injunctions blocking Tennessee’s ban, agreeing that the law discriminated on the basis of sex and likely infringed on parental rights. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned those injunctions, allowing the law to go into effect. The Supreme Court upheld the Sixth Circuit’s ruling.
The Court’s decision has implications far beyond Tennessee. At least half of all states have passed laws similar to Tennessee’s, and the Skrmetti ruling greenlights all of them.
Moreover, it paves the way for a nationwide ban on so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors, which even former supporters have exposed as a barbaric and manipulative practice. Bills like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” would make it a felony to prescribe cross-sex hormones to or perform gender surgeries on minors. It also allows individuals who are the victims of such practices to sue providers.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, explained that Tennessee’s law does not discriminate on the basis of sex because it “prohibits healthcare providers from administering puberty blockers and hormones to minors for certain medical uses, regardless of a minor’s sex.”
Roberts also rejected the challengers’ assertion that the Tennessee law “might encourage minors to become disdainful of their sex” by enforcing “a government preference that people conform to expectations about their sex.” As he wrote, the Tennessee law reflects a “legitimate, substantial, and compelling interest in protecting minors from physical and emotional harm.”
Concurring opinions from Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Clarence Thomas are also worth mentioning. They go further than the Roberts majority opinion in questioning the legitimacy of the challengers’ arguments about transgenderism itself – not just the legal challenge to the specific Tennessee law in question.
Barrett, who has come under fire recently for siding with the Court’s liberal justices on some occasions, wrote that “transgender status is not marked by the same sort of ‘obvious immutable, and or distinguishing characteristics’ as race or sex.” Furthermore, being transgender is “not defined by a trait that is ‘definitively ascertainable at the moment of birth.’”
In other words, she argues, transgender status is not a protected class under the 14th Amendment. As she points out, many people begin identifying as transgender late in life, and many others de-transition and return to identifying as their actual gender. Transgenderism is, then, contrary to the cries of gender ideologues, precisely the opposite of an “immutable” characteristic.
Justice Thomas went even further. “This case carries a simple lesson,” he wrote. “In politically contentious debates over matters shrouded in scientific uncertainty, courts should not assume that self-described experts are correct.”
Thomas also blasted the Biden administration for giving “outsized credit to claims about medical consensus and expertise” and contended that the challengers in the case “have surreptitiously compromised their medical recommendations to achieve political ends.”
Thomas here is questioning the very legitimacy of transgenderism itself. The majority opinion authored by Roberts simply asserts that states have a right to set policy about controversial medical practices like transgender treatments for minors. But Thomas is suggesting that the proponents of transgenderism in the medical field should not be taken at their word – a stinging rebuke of lower court judges who have done just that.
The dissent from the three liberal justices is also worth examining, because it underscores just how wide and deep the divide over transgenderism is in American society. Led by Justice Sonya Sotomayor, they argue that the Tennessee law “plainly classifies on the basis of sex” and said they dissent “in sadness” and without the traditional qualifying phrase of “respectfully.”
Overall, the dissenting opinion reads like a screed written by a transgender activist. It accepts as undisputed fact the idea someone can be born into the “wrong” body and that young children have the capacity to know they are transgender with enough certainty to make life-altering decisions. It further gives blind deference to the assertions of gender ideologues that so-called “gender-affirming care” is “life-saving” – despite the fact that the most comprehensive study to date, released in February, shows that transgender-identifying individuals who undergo surgery “were at a significantly higher risk for depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorders than those without surgery.”
Taken together, the majority and dissenting opinions reflect the broader public debate on the issue. Roberts and the majority recognize that, even under the most charitable interpretation of the evidence, there are very real concerns about permanent harms caused by transgender treatments for minors. Even if one believes that someone can change their gender, the state has a legitimate interest in protecting minors from medical treatments that could leave them sterilized, permanently disfigured, or worse.
While proponents of transgender ideology hide behind cries of “parental rights,” the Court majority, like most Americans, understands how ridiculous that line is. No one questions that parents don’t have a “right” to give their children alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes. Why should they be able to sign off on permanent, life-altering treatments that are completely unnecessary from a medical perspective?
Proponents of gender ideology, on the other hand, like the Court’s dissenting justices, are incapable of moving beyond partisan talking points. Despite a mounting pile of evidence on the dangers of transgender drug regimens and surgeries, particularly for minors (and the immense weight of biological evidence pointing to the existence of two distinct, unchangeable sexes down to the DNA level) gender ideologues insist that we must take their claims at face value and not question them.
Ultimately, however, a majority of the American people, like a majority of the Supreme Court justices, aren’t buying it. The Skrmetti decision is a legal milestone – but it’s also a cultural one. After years of ideological capture, common sense is prevailing again at the Supreme Court, and in American society writ large.
Shane Harris is the Editor in Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
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