The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on Wednesday in United States v. Skrmetti, a case challenging a Tennessee law that bans “gender-affirming care” on minors.
Tennessee’s Protecting Children from Gender Mutilation Act, the law being reviewed by the Supreme Court, was signed in March 2023 by Governor Bill Lee.
The state law forbids healthcare providers from performing or administering to underage children “gender-affirming” medical procedures or treatments for the purpose of enabling the child to identify with the opposite gender.
“Gender-affirming care” includes puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and sex-change surgeries.
The Supreme Court will decide whether or not the Tennessee law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment – a decision that will set a precedent for current and future laws targeting “gender-affirming care” for minors moving forward.
A decision by the nation’s highest court in United States v. Skrmetti is likely expected by the end of June 2025 on the following question:
Whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1 (SB1), which prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity,” Tenn. Code Ann. § 68-33-103(a)(1), violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Tennessee state law was initially challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its legal partners before the U.S. Department of Justice also filed a legal challenge to the law.
The Supreme Court will specifically review a September ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed a district court’s preliminary injunction in the case and allowed the law to remain in effect.
Tennessee Solicitor General Matt Rice will defend the Sixth Circuit’s opinion before the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
In June, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti told The Tennessee Star’s editor-in-chief and CEO, Michael Patrick Leahy, that the Supreme Court’s ruling on the state law will be a “major step toward clarity” regarding the scope of protections under the 14th Amendment.
“There’s been so much litigation in this area. There have been so many big changes happening in the law and in society, and what we really need here is clarity,” Skrmetti said at the time.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Jonathan Skrmetti” by Tennessee Attorney General.
Thank you both Solicitor Matt Rice and Attorney General Johnathan Skrmetti for pursuing protection of parents and children. Tennesseans like me are proud of Gov. Lee and you for standing against those “who call evil good and good evil.”
Merry Christmas
Thank you for taking the lead in Protecting Our Children. And vulnerable parents who are seduced by greedy so called “professionals “.
Clearly anyone with an ounce of humanity, spirituality & common sense would never in a million years have dreamed that such a nightmare could be plotted in the name of GREED at the expense of the innocence.
Once the TENNESSEE LAW banning such vile procedures is found Constitutional, our State Legislature needs to strengthen the law with consequences for violators. Any person involved in the destruction of a child’s future & well being by playing God, should be prosecuted with all the seriousness of a murder. They should receive prison time equivalent to murder. This is way beyond Child Abuse. It’s the actual destruction of any normal life , any opportunity to have children of their own, & a victim to life long drug & push therapy.
So Life w/o Parole would seem appropriate for the crime. Additionally, the perpetrators should be held financially liable for their victims medical expenses, pain & suffering for a lifetime.
Money is the Root of all Evil.