For the past decade, the United States has witnessed an enormous spike in transgender identification among youth that, for some, entailed strange and dangerous experiments with their bodies. This term, the Supreme Court, thankfully, intervened. In three key cases, U.S. v. Skrmetti, Mahmoud v. Taylor, and Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, SCOTUS protected children from the fantasies of gender ideology and its biological consequences.
These decisions reject the manipulation of the law in the service of gender ideology and hold ideologues in government accountable. In so doing, the court also safeguarded childhood.
In Skrmetti, the court upheld Tennessee’s ban on medical “transitions” for minors, rejecting the ACLU’s argument that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause. As Chief Justice Roberts explained for the 6-3 majority, the law “does not classify on any bases that warrant heightened review.” He wrote: “The mere use of sex-based language does not sweep a statute within the reach of heightened scrutiny.” Nor did the application of the law “turn on sex.”
Trans activists hoped Skrmetti would do for gender ideology what Roe and its progeny for decades did for abortion. This Supreme Court wasn’t falling for it. Much like the court did in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the decision in Skrmetti refused to weaponize the Constitution to block Tennessee from sensibly regulating experimental and highly suspect “interventions” on confused children.
