The Supreme Court’s decision upholding a Tennessee law that denies puberty blockers and hormone therapies to transgender youth traces its roots to the spring of 2021. That’s when Arkansas became the first state to pass a law prohibiting gender-transition treatments for minors.
Alabama followed in 2022. Tennessee’s ban was part of a coordinated deluge: Twenty-five states have now enacted laws that restrict doctors from providing puberty blockers, hormone therapies or surgery to transgender minors. Two more, New Hampshire and Arizona, ban only surgeries.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Skrmetti, the challenge to Tennessee’s ban, will affect how lower courts handle the challenges to similar statutes in states across the country. But legal experts said the outcome will not be universal.
Over a dozen challenges to bans in other states remain underway. Some are in state courts, and others are advancing claims in federal courts that are different from the equal protection claim that the Supreme Court considered in Skrmetti.
The court’s decision will not directly affect states where bans are not in place.
“There’s a reason why we advanced exclusively state constitutional claims,’’ said Alex Rate, the legal director of A.C.L.U. of Montana, which is representing transgender plaintiffs in a case that has, for now, blocked the Montana ban. “And that’s because our constitution grants more rights than the federal counterpart.’’
Several challenges in federal courts argue that the laws violate parents’ right to control their children’s medical care. The Eight Circuit Court of Appeals is considering that argument in the appeal of a lower court’s 2023 decision striking down Arkansas’ ban.
And in striking down Florida’s ban, a federal judge found the law unconstitutional because some of the state’s lawmakers acted with “discriminatory animus.’’ The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has allowed the law to go into effect there while it considers the state’s appeal.
Amy Harmon covers how shifting conceptions of gender affect everyday life in the United States.
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