The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider Tennessee’s ban on child sex change procedures.
The case, United States v. Skrmetti, considers whether a Tennessee law that bans medical procedures intended to enable “minor[s] to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex ” — such as cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and surgical procedures — violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The Department of Justice argued that laws like Tennessee’s are “creating profound uncertainty for transgender adolescents and their families around the Nation—and inflicting particularly acute harms.”
“[T]his Court’s intervention is urgently needed because Tennessee’s law is part of a wave of similar bans preventing transgender adolescents from obtaining medical care that they, their parents, and their doctors have all concluded is necessary,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) argued in its petition to the Supreme Court. “Although such care has been provided to adolescents for decades, in the last three years eighteen other States have adopted categorical bans like Tennessee’s.”