SCOTUS To Decide Whether States Can Restrict “Gender-Affirming Care” For Minors

The Supreme Court has accepted the Biden administration’s case against a transgender care ban in Tennessee, signaling the Court’s first significant examination of gender-affirming care.

The state law, implemented in the previous year, bars hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors and imposes civil penalties on doctors who defy these restrictions.

This law is part of a series of state regulations passed in recent years specifically aimed at transgender care.

The Human Rights Campaign reports that nearly half of U.S. states have put in place comparable bans for minors. The case is set to be heard this autumn, as per CNN’s coverage.

“The Supreme Court was always going to have to resolve how state bans on gender-affirming medical care can be reconciled with its approach to sex-based discrimination. Today’s grant sets up this issue as one of the early blockbusters for the Court’s upcoming term,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

President Joe Biden spoke at Hillsborough Community College’s Dale Mabry campus in Tampa, Florida on April 23, 2024, and was met with cheers from the crowd. He discussed the topic of abortion rights during the event.

In a legal battle, the Biden administration and families of transgender minors have contested laws in Kentucky and Tennessee. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the only challenge filed by the Biden administration in Tennessee.

After a district court initially ruled against a ban on gender-affirming care, the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati overturned this decision in September, effectively allowing the ban to take effect.

Supporters of the ban from the Republican Party argue that decisions about care should be postponed until a person reaches adulthood.

On the other hand, opponents claim that these laws not only infringe on the civil rights of trans youth but also interfere with parents’ rights to make decisions about their child’s medical care.

In Tennessee, it is illegal for doctors to perform procedures that facilitate a minor’s identification with or living as a gender different from their sex or to treat discomfort related to a mismatch between their sex and asserted identity.

This type of ban has been under scrutiny in federal courts for over a year. In April, Idaho officials briefly enforced a strict statewide ban on gender-affirming care for most minors after receiving approval from the Supreme Court. However, during this period, the court did not address the case’s fundamental questions.

The Supreme Court has been active recently. In another recent decision, the court rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting individuals who have been subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms.

The vote was 8-1, with Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting.

“The court holds that when an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment,” SCOTUS Blog reported.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “Since the founding, our nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms. As applied to the facts of this case, Section 922(g)(8) fits comfortably within this tradition.”

Discussing the application by the lower courts of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Roberts writes, “Some courts have misunderstood the methodology of our recent Second Amendment cases. These precedents were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber.”

Otherwise, Roberts explained, the Second Amendment would only protect “muskets and sabers.”

“Why and how the regulation burdens the right are central to this inquiry. For example, if laws at the founding regulated firearm use to address particular problems, that will be a strong indicator that contemporary laws imposing similar restrictions for similar reasons fall within a permissible category of regulations.”

The Supreme Court made headlines last week when it unanimously rejected a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s authority to regulate an abortion-related medication.

Justices ruled 9-0 that challengers lacked standing to oppose the FDA’s regulatory approval process of the abortion drug mifepristone, in a decision seen as a victory for the Biden administration and abortion rights activists, Fox News reported.

“Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue. Nor do the plaintiffs’ other standing theories suffice,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who authored the unanimous opinion.

“The plaintiffs have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to the FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone,” he said. “But under Article III of the Constitution, those kinds of objections alone do not establish a justiciable case or controversy in federal court,” he added.

The justices sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit in accordance with the Court’s opinion.

The case arose from a series of lawsuits initiated by a coalition of healthcare associations, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, alleging that the drug has a high incidence of complications.

The vote was 8-1, with Justice Clarence Thomas in opposition.