The US supreme court on Wednesday upheld a Tennessee law prohibiting some medical treatments for transgender minors, rejecting arguments that it violated the Constitution and shielding similar laws in more than 20 other states.
The ruling, which came amid the Trump administration’s fierce assaults on transgender rights, and follows a decision by the court five years ago to protect transgender people from workplace discrimination.
The vote was 6:3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, acknowledged the “fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field”.
“The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound,” he said.
He said these questions should be resolved by “the people, their elected representatives and the democratic process”.
The Tennessee law was enacted in 2023, amid a sweeping national pushback to expanding rights for transgender people. Since then, controversies about military service, athletes, bathrooms and pronouns have played a role in president Donald Trump’s second-term agenda.
The law prohibits medical providers from prescribing puberty-delaying medication, offering hormone therapy or performing surgery as treatment for the psychological distress caused by incongruence between experienced gender and a person’s biological sex.
The doctor and three families who sued to challenge the Tennessee law said it discriminated based on sex and transgender status in violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause. They noted the law specified that those prohibited treatments were allowed when undertaken for reasons other than gender transition care.
In a measure of the shifting politics around transgender issues, the Biden administration intervened on their side. After Mr Trump took office, his administration issued an executive order directing agencies to take steps to curtail surgeries, hormone therapy and other gender transition care for youths under 19. And in February, his administration formally reversed the government’s position in the case and urged the justices to uphold the law.
The briefs in the case before the supreme court surveyed the medical evidence, with the challengers stressing that major American medical associations support the prohibited treatments as crucial for alleviating the psychological distress of many transgender youths.
Tennessee’s brief countered that scientific uncertainty meant legislatures rather than courts should decide what treatments are available to minors. — The New York Times.
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