With transgender care ruling, Chief Justice Roberts tries to avoid extremes

After Supreme Court oral arguments last December, it was clear conservative justices had the votes to uphold state bans on gender care for trans youths under age 18. The question was how far the decision would sweep to affect trans individuals in other situations.

After Supreme Court oral arguments last December, it was clear conservative justices had the votes to uphold state bans on gender care for trans youths under age 18. The question was how far the decision would sweep to affect trans individuals in other situations. In the end, Chief Justice John Roberts used the power of his office to keep the opinion for himself. He penned a decision that affirmed state restrictions on puberty blockers and hormone therapy, but he declined to adopt the reasoning of some conservatives that could have made transgender people even more vulnerable to discrimination. Roberts, by virtue of his position as chief, assigns opinions when he is in the majority. He regularly keeps the most significant cases for himself, as he did in the controversy over President Donald Trump’s assertion of immunity from prosecution last year. Yet Roberts, now in his 20th year in the center chair, also strategically assigns cases to restrain or otherwise influence the court’s holding. On Wednesday, he fended off the more aggressive right-wing sentiment. In his seven-minute statement from the mahogany bench and in his written opinion, Roberts adopted a cut-and-dried tone. He eschewed the heat of the three liberal dissenters, as well as the conservatives who broke off to write their own statements. Justice Clarence Thomas, for example, insisted medical experts “have surreptitiously compromised their medical recommendations to achieve political ends,” and Justice Amy Coney Barrett raised concerns about boys’ and girls’ sports teams. All told, Roberts appeared to try to lower the temperature on the combustible issue of trans rights – which Trump promised to curtail during his 2024 reelection bid. Since taking office again in January, multiple executive orders have targeted trans people, including servicemembers in the US military. The chief justice’s 24-page opinion, to be sure, thoroughly rejected the challenge to a Tennessee law that forbids healthcare providers from providing hormones and other treatment for children under age 18 to transition or, as the law states, to “identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex.”