SCOTUS to Consider High-Profile Transgender Rights Case in December

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti on December 4, 2024. The potential blockbuster case involves a legal challenge to Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy as gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

Facts of the Case

On March 2, 2023, Tennessee enacted the Prohibition on Medical Procedures Performed on Minors Related to Sexual Identity (Act). Citing several concerns about recent treatments the medical profession offers to children with gender dysphoria, the Act bans certain medical treatments for minors with gender dysphoria. A healthcare provider may not “administer or offer to administer” “a medical procedure” to a minor “for the purpose of” either “[e]nabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or “[t]reating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”

Prohibited medical procedures include “[s]urgically removing, modifying, altering, or entering into tissues, cavities, or organs” and “[p]rescribing, administering, or dispensing any puberty blocker or hormone. The Act does not restrictthese procedures for Tennesseans 18 and over.

The Act contains two relevant exceptions. It permits the use of puberty blockers and hormones to treat congenital conditions, precocious puberty, disease, or physical injury.Additionally, it has a continuing care exception until March 31, 2024, which permits healthcare providers to continue administering a long-term treatment, say hormone therapy, that began before the Act’s effective date, July 1, 2023.

The Act authorizes the Tennessee Attorney General to enforce these prohibitions. It also permits the relevant state regulatory authorities to impose “professional discipline” on healthcare providers that violate the Act. Finally, the Act creates a private right of action, enabling an injured minor or nonconsenting parent to sue a healthcare provider for violating the law.

Three transgender minors, their parents, and a doctor sued several Tennessee officials, claiming the Act violated the United States Constitution’s guarantees of due process and equal protection. The district court preliminarily enjoined Tennessee officials’ enforcement of the law. However, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed. It held that despite the Act’s explicit sex-based classifications, it does not discriminate based on sex for purposes of the Equal Protection Clause. The majority further held that laws that discriminate against transgender individuals warrant only deferential rational-basis review.

Issues Before the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court granted certification on June 24, 2024. The justices agreed to consider the following question:

Whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1 (SBl), 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.

We will continue to closely follow this case. Please check back for updates.