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Supreme Court to Hear Landmark Case on Banning Transgender Treatments for Children

  • Michael Foust Crosswalk Headlines Contributor
  • Updated Jun 24, 2024
Supreme Court to Hear Landmark Case on Banning Transgender Treatments for Children

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up one of the nation’s most contentious issues, saying on Monday it will hear a challenge to a Tennessee law that bans transgender treatments on children. The court will hear the case in the fall and likely issue a decision by June 2025. This would be one of the most significant rulings in the court’s history —and definitely one of the most closely watched cases in the next term.  

The law in question, S.B. 1, prohibits hormones, puberty blockers, and sex-change surgery on children and was upheld by the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals last year. Nearly half the states have a law banning what supporters of the procedures say is “gender-affirming care.” 

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, expressed optimism the law will be upheld.  

“We fought hard to defend Tennessee’s law protecting kids from irreversible gender treatments and secured a thoughtful and well-reasoned opinion from the Sixth Circuit,” Skrmetti said. “I look forward to finishing the fight in the United States Supreme Court. This case will bring much-needed clarity to whether the Constitution contains special protections for gender identity.”

The case could also clarify the court’s direction on LGBT cases. Although the 6-3 conservative majority has issued decisions celebrated by conservative Christians on abortion and religious liberty, such has not always been the case on gender. In 2019, for example, the court sided with the LGBT community in Bostock v. Clayton County, which extended protections against employment discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Conservatives Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts joined the majority in that case; since then, conservative Amy Coney Barrett replaced liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In the Sixth Circuit decision last year, Chief Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton asserted that states must be allowed to tackle the issue without courts intervening.  

“As a result, federal courts must be vigilant not to ‘substitute’ their views for those of legislatures,” Sutton wrote. “... Given the high stakes of these nascent policy deliberations -- the long-term health of children facing gender dysphoria -- sound government usually benefits from more rather than less debate, more rather than less input, more rather than less consideration of fair-minded policy approaches. To permit legislatures on one side of the debate to have their say while silencing legislatures on the other side of the debate under the U.S. Constitution does not further these goals.”    

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Jemal Countess/Stringer

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.