The trans rights case before the justices on Wednesday is called United States v. Skrmetti, meaning that it is a challenge brought by the federal government.
But control of the government will change next month, and the Trump administration will almost certainly disavow the Biden administration’s argument that a Tennessee law barring some forms of medical treatment for transgender minors violates the Constitution.
That would ordinarily mean that there would be nothing left for the justices to decide, as both sides would then agree that the law was constitutional.
Something similar happened in 2017, the last time President-elect Donald J. Trump took office. That March, after the Trump administration reversed positions on the rights of transgender students, the Supreme Court dismissed a case it had previously agreed to decide, on whether a transgender boy in Virginia could use the boys’ bathroom at his high school.
But there is a wrinkle here. The challenge to the Tennessee law was initially brought by three families and a doctor, with the Biden administration intervening on their side. The families and the government filed separate petitions seeking review in the Supreme Court, and the justices accepted only the one from the government.
Rather than dismissing the case, the court could belatedly grant the companion petition. The court could hear another argument, or it could rely on the one on Wednesday, when a lawyer for the families, Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, will argue alongside Elizabeth B. Prelogar, the U.S. solicitor general, representing the Biden administration.
New administrations used to change positions sparingly. The Obama administration, for instance, did not flip positions in any cases on assuming office. The first Trump administration was considerably bolder. It changed positions in four major cases in its first full Supreme Court term, including ones on workers’ rights and voting rolls, prevailing in all four.
The Biden administration was not shy about switching positions, either. It disavowed the approaches of the Trump administration five times and lost four of those cases, according to a tally by Thomas Wolf of the Brennan Center for Justice.
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