The U.S. Supreme Court agreed today to hear a challenge to a Tennessee law barring “gender-affirming care” for minors.
Next term, the court will decide whether the ban denies children equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Last year, a federal appeals court allowed the law to remain in effect during the litigation, dissolving a lower court’s injunction to the contrary, as Legal Insurrection reported. The appeals court previously rejected emergency appeals seeking an injunction against anti-transition laws in Kentucky and Tennessee.
“We fought hard to defend Tennessee’s law protecting kids from irreversible gender treatments and secured a thoughtful and well-reasoned opinion from the Sixth Circuit,” said Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti in response to the decision. “I look forward to finishing the fight in the United States Supreme Court. This case will bring much-needed clarity to whether the Constitution contains special protections for gender identity.”
In the lower courts, the challengers argued that Tennessee’s law denied due process and violated parental rights. The Supreme Court, however, limited the issue to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The challengers have argued banning “gender-affirming care” deprives trans-identifying children of the equal protection of the law through sex-based discrimination. The appeals court rejected that argument, reasoning that sex discrimination does not occur merely because a law regulates a procedure “unique to one sex or the other.”
The appeals court also rejected the sex-discrimination argument because the Tennessee law restricts “gender-affirming care” for both male and female children equally.
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