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The Tennessee Conservative [By Adelia Kirchner] –
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has officially decided to uphold a Tennessee State law from 2023, banning “gender-affirming” medical treatment for minors, SCOTUS justices will work to address several other legal cases on the same issue.
These cases include more than half a dozen petitions over a variety of transgender athlete bans, bathroom restrictions and the removal of “gender-affirming” surgeries from Medicaid plans across different states.
“As frustrating an answer as it is, I don’t actually think this tells us much at all of how those other contexts will proceed before this court,” Karen Loewy, Senior Counsel and Director of Lambda Legal’s constitutional law practice, said in regard to the recent decision upholding Tennessee’s law.
“In as much as I think we can try to read tea leaves and find doctrinal throughlines, this is one of those instances where the court made clear that they were just doing something different and specific here,” Loewy continued according to The Hill.
As SCOTUS justices deliberated on the Tennessee law in U.S. v. Skrmetti, the petitions over new transgender laws in other states piled up.
With the U.S. v. Skrmetti decision finally made, the court can turn its attention to other cases.
According to case dockets, justices focused on the 9 other transgender related petitions during their weekly closed-door conference on Thursday of this week.
Typically, SCOTUS would proceed by sending these cases back to lower courts to reevaluate based on the recent intervening decision.
However, Idaho Governor Brad Little (R) and West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey (R) are asking SCOTUS to hear the cases because they don’t believe the issues will be better resolved by the lower courts at this point in time.
On Tuesday, McCuskey asked SCOTUS to hear West Virginia’s defense of its 2021 transgender athlete ban.
The law has been blocked by lower courts and this is the third time West Virginia has asked the Supreme Court to step in and allow the state to move forward with enforcement of the law.
McCuskey, the Alliance Defending Freedom and attorneys for various members of the West Virginia Board of Education have said the Tennessee case did not actually answer some of the constitutional questions relevant to their case.
“United States v. Skrmetti disclaims any guidance on the Title IX question presented here, and the decision’s equal-protection analysis does not address critical questions unique to athletics,” the group wrote.
They argue that public schools are still “between a rock and a hard place” with President Trump’s executive order to ban transgender students from girls’ and women’s sports, as well as the Trump Administration’s argument that Title IX prohibits transgender athletes from competing.
“Should they follow an executive order that threatens all their funding — even funding unrelated to athletics? Or should they follow a court order that has not yet been applied to them?” McCuskey’s office wrote in court filings. “The years of delay that would follow were the Court to grant, vacate, and remand here would not help.”
Gov. Little asked SCOTUS to take up Idaho’s transgender athlete law, also saying that lower court proceedings would seem to “delay the inevitable.”
“Whether designating sports teams based on biological sex violates the Equal Protection Clause is a critically important issue that has been roiling the lower courts, frustrating female student athletes, and confounding every level of government for years,” the State of Idaho wrote in court filings earlier this week.
Come of the other cases regarding transgender laws currently on the SCOTUS docket include:
- Transgender Athlete Ban – Arizona
- Medicaid “Gender-Affirming” Surgery Ban – West Virginia
- Medicaid “Gender-Affirming” Surgery Ban – Idaho
- Government Employee Health Plan “Gender-Affirming” Surgery Ban – North Carolina
- Ban on Changing Sex Designation on Official Documents – Oklahoma
About the Author: Adelia Kirchner is a Tennessee resident and reporter for the Tennessee Conservative. Currently the host of Subtle Rampage Podcast, she has also worked for the South Dakota State Legislature and interned for Senator Bill Hagerty’s Office in Nashville, Tennessee. You can reach Adelia at adelia@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
