Supreme Court Upholds Tennessee’s Ban On Gender-affirming Care For Minors

The Supreme Court has upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.

In a 6-3 ruling Wednesday, the court’s conservative majority rejected a challenge from transgender adolescents and their families who argued that the ban violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that the ban, passed in 2023, does not discriminate against people based on their “transgender status.” The majority also rejected arguments from the law’s challengers that it amounts to unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of sex.

“The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound. The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements. Nor does it afford us license to decide them as we see best,” Roberts wrote.

The court’s liberals dissented, arguing that the law clearly draws sex-based distinctions and that Tennessee should have been required to prove in court the measure was necessary to advance an important state interest.

“The majority refuses to call a spade a spade,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Instead, it obfuscates a sex classification that is plain on the face of this statute.”

The Tennessee law bars medical providers from prescribing hormone therapy or puberty inhibitors to anyone under 18 for the purpose of treating gender dysphoria, although those treatments remain available for other diagnoses. (The law also bars gender-affirming surgeries for minors, but that part of the law was not challenged at the Supreme Court.)

About 20 other states have enacted similar bans on gender-affirming care for minors. President Donald Trump has also moved to stop federal money from being used for gender-affirming care for minors — part of a broader agenda against what the president has called “gender ideology.”

When the case was argued at the high court last fall, the Biden administration argued that the law was unconstitutional. But shortly after Trump took office in January, the executive branch switched its position and supported Tennessee.