The Faulty Logic behind the Supreme Court's Failure to Protect Trans Minors
"On June 18, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming hormonal treatment for transgender minors against an Equal Protection Clause challenge in United States v. Skrmetti.1 Transgender adolescents who need these medical interventions but live in one of the many states that ban them may need to look elsewhere for care. Nearly every major relevant U.S. health care organization has concluded that the prescription of hormones and puberty blockers for treating gender dysphoria in transgender adolescents is often medically appropriate in that it can improve mental health and well-being, whereas untreated gender dysphoria can lead to depression, anxiety, and suicidality.
The implications of the Court’s ruling for these young people and their families, including for the plaintiffs in Skrmetti — for whom such care provided substantial, potentially lifesaving, health benefits — will be profound. The decision could have important consequences for all Americans, given the Court’s overly broad deference to lawmakers regarding medical decisions, even when those lawmakers are motivated by ideology rather than science and support for individual freedom. The decision does, however, offer some reasons to be hopeful that future legal challenges to laws targeting transgender people could succeed.
The narrow issue before the Court was whether a law that forbids the prescription of puberty blockers or hormones for treating gender dysphoria but permits it for other purposes was subject to heightened constitutional review under the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Two principal theories were advanced to support the contention that the law was subject to heightened review (I joined an amicus brief in this case)."
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2506282?query=featured_home