Supreme Court Deals Another Major Blow To Transgender Rights

This decision could set a precedent for other challenges to laws barring transgender people from participating in sports, using bathrooms and accessing health care.

In a landmark ruling that could dramatically reshape how transgender rights and sex discrimination cases are handled by the courts for years to come, the Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care for minors in a 6-3 ruling.

Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion while justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. In the ruling, the court held that the Tennessee ban was not subject to heightened scrutiny, allowing the ban to remain in place.

This decision could set a precedent for other challenges to laws barring transgender people from participating in sports, using bathrooms and accessing health care. It also marks the second blow the Supreme Court has dealt to transgender rights advocates recently, after the highest court allowed President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender service members in the military to take effect in May.

At the heart of United States v. Skrmetti is Tennessee’s Senate Bill 1, which passed in March 2023 and banned gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors, as well as surgical care, which is already extremely rare. Less than a month after the bill was signed into law, three families of trans youth and one Memphis-based doctor filed a lawsuit, alleging that SB 1’s provisions on hormones and puberty blockers violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which has been interpreted to include discrimination based on sex since the 1970s.

The Supreme Court’s ruling clears the way for officials in Tennessee and other states to deny gender-affirming treatments like puberty blockers and hormone therapy to transgender youth.