United States: Over 160 House and Senate Democrats on Tuesday urged the Supreme Court to ensure that trans minors have access to gender-affirming healthcare to overturn the Tennessee law that bans treatment for youths younger than eighteen during the justice’s review of the law this fall.
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In June, the Supreme Court said it would take up Tennessee’s law and assess the constitutionality of it, which organizations supporting transgender minors and transgender people and their families claim violates the rights of the former and encroaches on the rights of parents to make decisions on health care for their children.
Impending decision by the court
The justices’ decision to take the case is the first time the high court will get involved in the issue and sets up a major battle over transgender rights that will have implications for laws enacted in almost half the states that target the treatment of trans kids and teenagers, the Hill reported.
There has been an avenue of lawsuits that have been filed by transgender youths, their families, or medical practitioners, which have received variable outcomes; moreover, there exists a conflict in the circuits of the federal appeals court with regard to the constitutionality of legal prohibitions against gender affirmation treatment.
Moreover, in a November filing, the Justice Department stated that the Supreme Court’s intervention is “urgently needed” while arguing that conflicting court rulings have posed a “profound uncertainty” for transgender people.
Democratic lawmakers in Tuesday’s brief noted a 2006 Supreme Court decision in a case where a state attorney general sought to bar physicians from providing certain medications for physician-assisted suicide.
In that case, the court upheld Congress’ decision and said that Congress had rightly denied the attorney general’s “authority to make quintessentially medical judgments” and also questioned whether politicians with no medical training should meddle with such decisions.
The lawmakers said, “The Court should afford the same skepticism to legislation banning a politically marginalized group from choosing to undergo certain treatments—particularly where a law has been passed in spite of the available science,” as the Hill reported.
“Every major medical association agrees that gender-affirming care—including hormone therapy—is safe, effective, and necessary to treat certain conditions,” they added.
“Yet despite knowing this, Tennessee has banned it,” as the 164 lawmakers wrote down in the 27-page brief.
“That puts the government exactly where it should hesitate to be: between a patient seeking critical care and the health care providers seeking to treat that patient,” added.
