Transgender young people, their families, and their medical providers on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to block a Tennessee law that bans gender transition care for people under 18. If the high court takes the case, it would be the first opportunity the justices have had to weigh in on such restrictions, which 21 states have passed since 2021.
In a petition to the Court, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union called on the justices to review a September decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit Court that upheld laws that bar transgender children in Tennessee and Kentucky from accessing puberty blockers, hormones and gender-affirming surgeries.
At the time, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti (R) called the ruling “a big win for democracy.”
“Decisions that are not clearly resolved by the Constitution should be resolved by the people through their elected representatives,” he said.
Legal experts believe the Supreme Court will eventually rule on whether these bans violate the Constitution, but the court has great flexibility in deciding when and how to take cases. The Court receives thousands of petitions each year, but takes less than 70 or so.
Historically, the Court has taken cases when the issue at hand is of great significance and the lower courts have issued contradictory rulings. Though federal district courts have remained divided on whether trans young people should have access to transition care, only the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in the Midwest and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in the South — one level below the Supreme Court — have issued rulings. Both have upheld legislative bans.
A third circuit court may soon rule. In September, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin (R) petitioned the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit Court to review an earlier decision that blocked Arkansas’s law from taking effect until the case is resolved.
The Tennessee lawsuit, L.W. v. Skrmetti, dates back to a measure legislators there passed in March. Senate Bill 1 prohibits medical providers from treating transgender young people with hormones, puberty blockers or gender-affirming surgeries and requires youth currently receiving that care to end it by March 31, 2024.
Three weeks after Tennessee approved its ban, Kentucky enacted its own over Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto.
L.W., the 15-year-old transgender girl at the center of the Tennessee lawsuit, told The Washington Post she felt scared and “bullied” when the law passed.
Puberty blockers and estrogen treatments have enabled the Nashville teen to live a comfortable and confident life. Before she came out and began receiving treatment at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, L.W. felt so uncomfortable with her body that she didn’t want to hug her family members, court documents say. Public bathrooms made L.W. feel anxious, so she avoided using them, a practice that led her to develop several urinary tract infections.
After she came out to her parents in the fall of 2020, they took her to Vanderbilt, where a team of doctors assessed her and went over the risk factors and potential side-effects of taking medication to stop her male puberty. She took Lupron for more than a year, then, after another round of physical and mental health evaluations, she began estrogen hormone therapy. L.W. and her parents said both treatments improved the teenager’s mental health. She is “now outgoing and thriving,” according to court documents.
Though Tennessee’s law said care had to end by March 31, 2024, Vanderbilt stopped offering the care in June. L.W.'s family now drives five hours to Ohio for care, but that state is also considering a ban.
In court documents, L.W. said she is scared that losing access to her medication, which she has been taking for two years, will mean that her body “will undergo unwanted, permanent changes.”
In a post on X, Skrmetti said the ban “protects children from irreversible gender-related medical interventions.”
The American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the Endocrine Society and other major medical organizations oppose restrictions on gender-affirming care.
Both Tennessee and Kentucky’s laws were set to take effect in July, but in June a federal district court judge in Arkansas ruled that that state’s ban violated both the First and 14th Amendments. District court judges then blocked Kentucky’s law and partially blocked Tennessee’s.
U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson, a Trump appointee, wrote in the Tennessee ruling, “If Tennessee wishes to regulate access to certain medical procedures, it must do so in a manner that does not infringe on the rights conferred by the United States Constitution, which is of course supreme to all other laws of the land. With regard to SB1, Tennessee has likely failed to do just this.”
Families with transgender children assumed they were in the clear, but nine days later, in a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel at the 6th circuit stayed Richardson’s injunction and allowed Tennessee's law to take effect, a move that led Kentucky to reinstate its ban.
Brian Williams, L.W.'s father, said that decision was “infuriating.”
“You go through this process of trying to figure out what’s going on with your child. You want them to be happy. You want them to be healthy, and you’re trying to figure out a good solution. You go to all these experts who are telling you this is what you need to do, ” he said. “And then all of a sudden to have a state come down and say that that’s not the right thing to do, that it’s abusive, that it’s wrongheaded, is infuriating. I feel like I’m doing all the right stuff, and now I’m being told that I’m not by people who are not educated on this whatsoever.”
Two anonymous families and one Memphis-based gynecologist also joined the Tennessee suit. The ACLU of Kentucky filed its suit on behalf of seven anonymous families.
Chase Strangio, the deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a statement that the last year had “radically rewritten” transgender rights.
“Tens of thousands of transgender youth like L.W. are at risk of losing the medical care that serves as the foundation of their entire life because of brand new laws that target them and only them,” Strangio said. “These laws not only destabilize the lives of transgender youth but also disrupt their families and communities and threaten established legal protections with far-reaching implications. The justices have an opportunity to follow long-standing precedent and block Tennessee’s dangerous law.”
The Supreme Court has handed several wins to transgender rights activists in recent years.
In 2020’s Bostock v. Clayton County, the Court ruled 6-3 that federal employment law protections apply to millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers. The Court has also declined to review a number of cases where the lower courts had decided in favor of trans rights at school, in prisons and in disability protections. Earlier this year, it also denied West Virginia’s request to allow its law barring transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams at public schools go into effect while legal challenges to it play out.
In a petition to the Court, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union called on the justices to review a September decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit Court that upheld laws that bar transgender children in Tennessee and Kentucky from accessing puberty blockers, hormones and gender-affirming surgeries.
At the time, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti (R) called the ruling “a big win for democracy.”
“Decisions that are not clearly resolved by the Constitution should be resolved by the people through their elected representatives,” he said.
Legal experts believe the Supreme Court will eventually rule on whether these bans violate the Constitution, but the court has great flexibility in deciding when and how to take cases. The Court receives thousands of petitions each year, but takes less than 70 or so.
Historically, the Court has taken cases when the issue at hand is of great significance and the lower courts have issued contradictory rulings. Though federal district courts have remained divided on whether trans young people should have access to transition care, only the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in the Midwest and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in the South — one level below the Supreme Court — have issued rulings. Both have upheld legislative bans.
A third circuit court may soon rule. In September, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin (R) petitioned the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit Court to review an earlier decision that blocked Arkansas’s law from taking effect until the case is resolved.
The Tennessee lawsuit, L.W. v. Skrmetti, dates back to a measure legislators there passed in March. Senate Bill 1 prohibits medical providers from treating transgender young people with hormones, puberty blockers or gender-affirming surgeries and requires youth currently receiving that care to end it by March 31, 2024.
Three weeks after Tennessee approved its ban, Kentucky enacted its own over Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto.
L.W., the 15-year-old transgender girl at the center of the Tennessee lawsuit, told The Washington Post she felt scared and “bullied” when the law passed.
Puberty blockers and estrogen treatments have enabled the Nashville teen to live a comfortable and confident life. Before she came out and began receiving treatment at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, L.W. felt so uncomfortable with her body that she didn’t want to hug her family members, court documents say. Public bathrooms made L.W. feel anxious, so she avoided using them, a practice that led her to develop several urinary tract infections.
After she came out to her parents in the fall of 2020, they took her to Vanderbilt, where a team of doctors assessed her and went over the risk factors and potential side-effects of taking medication to stop her male puberty. She took Lupron for more than a year, then, after another round of physical and mental health evaluations, she began estrogen hormone therapy. L.W. and her parents said both treatments improved the teenager’s mental health. She is “now outgoing and thriving,” according to court documents.
Though Tennessee’s law said care had to end by March 31, 2024, Vanderbilt stopped offering the care in June. L.W.'s family now drives five hours to Ohio for care, but that state is also considering a ban.
In court documents, L.W. said she is scared that losing access to her medication, which she has been taking for two years, will mean that her body “will undergo unwanted, permanent changes.”
In a post on X, Skrmetti said the ban “protects children from irreversible gender-related medical interventions.”
The American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the Endocrine Society and other major medical organizations oppose restrictions on gender-affirming care.
Both Tennessee and Kentucky’s laws were set to take effect in July, but in June a federal district court judge in Arkansas ruled that that state’s ban violated both the First and 14th Amendments. District court judges then blocked Kentucky’s law and partially blocked Tennessee’s.
U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson, a Trump appointee, wrote in the Tennessee ruling, “If Tennessee wishes to regulate access to certain medical procedures, it must do so in a manner that does not infringe on the rights conferred by the United States Constitution, which is of course supreme to all other laws of the land. With regard to SB1, Tennessee has likely failed to do just this.”
Families with transgender children assumed they were in the clear, but nine days later, in a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel at the 6th circuit stayed Richardson’s injunction and allowed Tennessee's law to take effect, a move that led Kentucky to reinstate its ban.
Brian Williams, L.W.'s father, said that decision was “infuriating.”
“You go through this process of trying to figure out what’s going on with your child. You want them to be happy. You want them to be healthy, and you’re trying to figure out a good solution. You go to all these experts who are telling you this is what you need to do, ” he said. “And then all of a sudden to have a state come down and say that that’s not the right thing to do, that it’s abusive, that it’s wrongheaded, is infuriating. I feel like I’m doing all the right stuff, and now I’m being told that I’m not by people who are not educated on this whatsoever.”
Two anonymous families and one Memphis-based gynecologist also joined the Tennessee suit. The ACLU of Kentucky filed its suit on behalf of seven anonymous families.
Chase Strangio, the deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a statement that the last year had “radically rewritten” transgender rights.
“Tens of thousands of transgender youth like L.W. are at risk of losing the medical care that serves as the foundation of their entire life because of brand new laws that target them and only them,” Strangio said. “These laws not only destabilize the lives of transgender youth but also disrupt their families and communities and threaten established legal protections with far-reaching implications. The justices have an opportunity to follow long-standing precedent and block Tennessee’s dangerous law.”
The Supreme Court has handed several wins to transgender rights activists in recent years.
In 2020’s Bostock v. Clayton County, the Court ruled 6-3 that federal employment law protections apply to millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers. The Court has also declined to review a number of cases where the lower courts had decided in favor of trans rights at school, in prisons and in disability protections. Earlier this year, it also denied West Virginia’s request to allow its law barring transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams at public schools go into effect while legal challenges to it play out.
