This month, medical watchdog organization Do No Harm (DNH) launched a first-of-its-kind database revealing the medical facilities that are providing so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors. This encompasses irreversible sex reassignment surgery, as Townhall covered.
DNH revealed that over 5,000 children in the United States had undergone some form of gender transition surgery. This includes procedures like mastectomies.
A poll released shortly after found that most registered voters, 59 percent, support a federal ban on such procedures, and puberty blockers, for minors, which Townhall also covered.
Now, a case on this issue has made its way to the highest court in the country.
The United States Supreme Court will hear a case surrounding transgender care for children in Tennessee.
The case, United States v. Skrmetti, challenged a 2023 state law banning so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors. This includes hormone treatments and sex reassignment surgery.
The law escalated to the Supreme Court shortly after it was passed (via SCOTUS Blog):
Three transgender teenagers and their parents went to federal court to challenge the law; the Biden administration joined the case under a law that allows the government to intervene in private cases alleging violations of the constitutional right to equal protection under the law. A federal judge agreed with them that the law’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender teens violates the Constitution because the law allows similar treatments for young people wishing to conform to the sex they were assigned at birth. But a federal appeals court reversed that decision, prompting the Biden administration to come to the Supreme Court, which agreed last summer to weigh in.
According to NBC News, a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) will be the first “openly transgender” attorney to argue before the High Court for this case.
Chase Strangio, 41, is a “legal expert” on transgender rights.
“He brings to the lectern not only brilliant constitutional lawyering, but also the tenacity and heart of a civil rights champion,” ACLU Legal Director Cecillia Wang told the outlet.
Reportedly, the challengers to Tennessee’s law argue that banning so-called “gender-affirming care” violates the United States Constitution.
“Tennessee lawfully exercised its power to regulate medicine by protecting minors from risky, unproven gender-transition interventions,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti reportedly said in a filing.
