The far-right campaigned to manufacture outrage over trans kids. The U.S. Supreme Court just bought into it<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in December 2024, a group of trans youth and supporters gathered outside the U.S. Supreme Court. Inside, lawyers presented oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti<\/em><\/a>, a case challenging a Tennessee law that bans doctors from performing gender-affirming care\u2014providing hormones, surgery and puberty blockers\u2014for young people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Standing outside the court, I learned the stakes of the case from Ari, a trans college student from Tennessee. \u201cI think legislation like this only leads to more dead kids,\u201d Ari told me<\/a> then. \u201cTennessee, being one of the most poorly educated, most under-resourced states in the country, is ignoring its own problems in order to terrorize children and families who just want to support their kids.\u201d But as arguments progressed inside the court, justices like John Roberts repeatedly asserted that the science was too complicated for them to wrap their heads around, and that this trans stuff should therefore be left up to the states.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Six months later, on June 18, the Court issued a ruling that confirmed what many trans people in the country feared would happen: The justices voted along party lines, and the Court\u2019s conservative majority upheld Tennessee\u2019s law. \u201cThis case carries a simple lesson: In politically contentious debates over matters shrouded in scientific uncertainty, courts should not assume that self-described experts are correct,\u201d wrote Clarence Thomas in a concurring opinion in the case. Instead of leaving medical decisions to children and their families, it leaves them in the hands of state governments. They concluded that the Tennessee law did not discriminate on the basis of sex, and therefore should not be subject to heightened scrutiny<\/a> from the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n