On Monday, the United States Supreme Court declared that it will consider a case involving a Tennessee statute that prohibits transgender kids from obtaining specific medical treatments within the state.
Hormonal therapy and medications that block puberty are among the prohibited treatments.
The court will hear arguments over transitional medical treatment for young transgender people for the first time.
The Biden Administration has requested that the court consider the case United States v. Skrmetti, raising the question of whether the new statute infringes on the constitutional rights of individuals seeking such care.
A ban on treating teenagers for gender dysphoria “frames that prohibition in explicitly sex-based terms,” according to the administration.
Physicians who provide transgender medical care, including hormone therapy, to juveniles are violating the law.
The nine Supreme Court justices approved the legislation based on an emergency application; the Times stated that the judges’ votes seemed to be divided along ideological lines, with liberal justices dissenting.
Additionally, the Kentucky case known as S.B. 150, which forbids physicians from prescribing hormone therapy, puberty blockers, or gender-transition surgery to patients younger than eighteen, is being brought before the court, according to the Times.
Days before important provisions of the legislation passed by federal judges in Kentucky and Tennessee this summer were scheduled to take effect, the laws were temporarily suspended.
The treatment bans were then reinstated in each state by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which reversed the earlier rulings. According to the Times, the plaintiffs in each case have now filed their cases with the Supreme Court.
