WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court of the United States has granted certiorari in a legal challenge brought by the United States and Tennessee families and a medical provider against a 2023 state law banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. The court is not expected to hear arguments until next fall.
“This Court has historically rejected efforts to uphold discriminatory laws, and without similar action here, these punitive, categorical bans on the provision of gender-affirming care will continue to wreak havoc on the lives of transgender youth and their families,” said Tara Borelli, Senior Counsel at Lambda Legal. “We are grateful that transgender youth and their families will have their day in the highest court, and we will not stop fighting to ensure access to this life-saving, medically necessary care.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Tennessee, Lambda Legal, and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP asked the Court to review a September 2023 decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals allowing Tennessee’s ban to stay in effect. The United States intervened in the Plaintiffs’ case at the district court and also asked the Court to review the Sixth Circuit decision. The Tennessee law prohibits medical providers from treating transgender youth with evidence-based gender-affirming medical treatment and requires youth receiving gender-affirming care to end that care by March 31, 2024.
Applying the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County and other long-standing precedents, trial courts have blocked such bans in Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. In June 2023, a federal court in Arkansas struck down that state’s ban on gender-affirming care after a two-week trial in the first and only post-trial ruling on the constitutionality of such a law, finding it violated the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The Supreme Court granted the Petition filed by the United States, which was a party in the Plaintiffs’ case. The United States’s granted petition can be found here.
More on LW. v. Skrmetti can be found here.
Find this press statement here.
Lambda Legal is a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people, and everyone living with HIV through impact litigation, education, and policy work. www.lambdalegal.org
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