Every conservative justice expressed skepticism Wednesday of the Biden administration’s challenge to state ban on child sex changes, except Justice Neil Gorsuch
Gorsuch, who authored a landmark ruling in 2020 expanding sex discrimination to include gender identity and sexual orientation in the context of employment, didn’t say a word during over two hours of oral arguments.
Tennessee’s law, which is at the center of the United States v. Skrmetti case, restricts minors from receiving medical treatments intended to help them live as an identity “inconsistent” with their sex. The Biden administration argues it draws sex-based lines on medical treatments in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
“Someone assigned female at birth can’t receive medication to live as a male, but someone assigned male can,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices. (RELATED: Watch the Daily Caller’s documentary “Groomed”)
Justice Samuel Alito pressed Prelogar on the government’s “sweeping” claim that overwhelming evidence shows puberty blockers and hormone therapy improve the wellbeing of adolescents with gender dysphoria. He pointed to the Cass Report, a British review of transgender medical studies released in April that found there is “weak evidence” for offering puberty blockers to kids.
“In your opening brief, you did not mention any of these European developments,” he said. “In your reply brief, is it not true that you relegated the Cass report to a footnote?”
Alito also questioned Chase Strangio, the transgender attorney who argued before the court on behalf of private plaintiffs represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, whether transgender identity is an “immutable” status. Some men who identify as women later come to again identify as male, he noted.
Alito: The Cass Report finds no evidence that gender affirmative treatments reduce suicide.
Strangio: “There is no evidence in those studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide… There are multiple studies that do show there is a reduction in suicidality.”
Stunning… pic.twitter.com/N2vHtJye26
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 4, 2024
Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justice Brett Kavanaugh, suggested the court should not venture into an area of contentious medical debate.
“It strikes me as a pretty heavy yellow light, if not red light, for this court to come in, the nine of us, and just constitutionalize the whole area when the rest of the world, or at least countries that have been at the forefront of this, are pumping the breaks on this kind of treatment because of concerns about the risks,” Kavanaugh said.
Tennessee lawmakers William Lamberth and Jack Johnson, who are behind the bill at the heart of today’s Supreme Court case, speak outside the court after oral arguments. @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/axy3SLopRC
— Katelynn Richardson (@katesrichardson) December 4, 2024
Meanwhile, the three liberal justices voiced support for the government’s position, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson comparing bans on child sex changes to bans on interracial marriage. (RELATED: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Says Child Sex Change Bans Are ‘Sort Of The Same Thing’ As Interracial Marriage Bans)
“I’m worried that we’re undermining the foundations of some of our bedrock equal protection cases,” Jackson said.
When Tennessee Solicitor General Matthew Rice highlighted the irreparable harm that drugs like cross sex hormones can have on children’s bodies, Justice Sonia Sotomayor brushed off concerns.
“Every medical treatment has a risk, even taking Aspirin,” Sotomayor told Rice.
In 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson could not provide a definition of the word “woman.”
Today, she heard oral arguments in a case that will determine if states can outlaw child sex changes. pic.twitter.com/6jb9EQs15O
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 4, 2024
Rice denied there was any sex-based line in Tennessee’s law, arguing the law draws a distinction based on medical purpose. Giving testosterone to a boy will allow the boy to “develop a normal body,” while giving it to a girl results in a “physical condition,” he explained.
Nearly half of U.S. states have passed similar laws banning sex change procedures for children.
In June, documents in another case challenging Alabama’s ban on child sex changes revealed the supposedly evidence-based medical standards created by the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), which are cited by the Biden administration, had been influenced by political and litigation concerns. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine pressured WPATH to remove the minimum age requirements for surgeries from its Standards of Care 8 guidelines.
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