Supreme Court upholds TN trans minor care bill

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — The U.S. Supreme Court voted to uphold Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

The 6-3 decision from Chief Justice Roberts was announced Wednesday morning. Justice Sotomayor dissented, joined by Jackson. Justice Kagan also dissented.

Click here to read the full decision.

Tennessee’s law bans puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors. Another 26 states have laws similar to the one in Tennessee.

Tennessee’s Attorney General, Jonathan Skrmetti, celebrated the court’s ruling on social media. 

“Landmark VICTORY for Tennessee at SCOTUS in defense of America’s children,” he wrote in a post on the social platform X.

Tennessee Equality Project released a statement, which reads:

We are profoundly disappointed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to side with the Tennessee legislature’s anti-transgender ideology and further erode the rights of transgender children and their families and doctors. We are grateful to the plaintiffs, families, and the ACLU for fighting on behalf more than 1.3 million transgender adults and 300,000 youth across the nation.

Gender-affirming care is proven to save lives. Major medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, support gender-affirming medical and psychological care because it saves lives and improves mental well-being. Providers, pediatricians, and specialists have been making thoughtful, evidence-based, and age-appropriate health care decisions with families and transgender patients for decades.

Equal access to health care and bodily autonomy are fundamental human rights for every person, including our transgender children and youth. Instead of protecting young transgender people across the nation, states will now feel emboldened to codify discrimination more broadly in health care. This ruling is yet another example of why governments, politicians, courts, and extremists have no place in the exam room, endangering every transgender person. The consequences of this devastating decision will be felt by anyone who needs gender-affirming care; worse for transgender patients already facing widespread discrimination in hostile states.

The Tennessee Equality Project fought this bill in the 2023 legislative session, then stood up for Tennesseans on the steps of the Supreme Court on December 4th, 2024. We are even more determined in our fight for transgender rights across Tennessee and call on our allies to honor transgender youth by taking actions in state and local government. To our transgender community, we see you, we love you, and we stand with you.

Rejecting a challenge mounted by the Biden administration, the high court ruled Tennessee’s law does not amount to sex discrimination, which requires a higher level of constitutional scrutiny.

“Having concluded it does not, we leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives, and the democratic process,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority.

Tennessee’s law, S.B. 1, prohibits health care providers from administering puberty blockers or hormone therapy to transgender minors when the medications are prescribed to help them transition. The law, which Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed in 2023, also bans gender-transition surgeries for minors, though that provision was not at issue before the high court. Providers who violate the law can face $25,000 civil fines for violations. 

Three Tennessee families and a doctor originally sued, and the Biden administration joined them, asserting the law discriminated based on sex in violation of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. 

Tennessee insisted the law distinguishes based on a treatment’s medical purpose, not sex, and the court should defer to the legislature’s judgment about regulating medicine for children.