The Supreme Court is scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday in an appeal involving transgender rights that could be the most important case of the court’s term.
The legal question in the case, called United States v. Skrmetti, is whether a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors violates the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee. How the court answers the question could affect similar laws across the country and transgender rights more broadly.
Three lawyers are set to argue to the justices in Washington. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar represents the federal government and Tennessee Solicitor General J. Matthew Rice represents the state, whose attorney general is Jonathan Skrmetti (hence the case name, United States v. Skrmetti). American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Chase Strangio represents the original plaintiffs in the lawsuit: transgender adolescents, their parents and a doctor who treats adolescents with gender dysphoria. Strangio will be the first openly transgender lawyer to argue at the court.
It’s not unprecedented for more than two parties to argue in a case. But the dynamic could be especially important here because the incoming Trump administration could take a different position than the Biden administration, which intervened in the suit against the state law. So it’s possible the group Strangio represents will be the only adversarial party to Tennessee when the justices eventually decide the case, if the federal government tells the court it no longer disagrees with the state after Trump takes office next month.
A decision is expected by the summer, when the court usually finishes ruling on cases heard during the term that started in October.
For now, at least, the federal government opposes the state. Arguing that the law, called SB1, is unconstitutionally discriminatory, Prelogar’s office wrote in a brief ahead of the hearing that, under the law:
… an adolescent assigned female at birth cannot receive puberty blockers or testosterone to live as a male, but an adolescent assigned male at birth can. And that focus on sex and gender conformity is deliberate: SB1 declares that its very purpose is to “encourag[e] minors to appreciate their sex” and to ban treatments “that might encourage minors to become disdainful of their sex.”
“That,” the federal government argues, “is sex discrimination.”
Defending the law, the state wrote in its own brief that it’s “not unconstitutional discrimination to say that drugs can be prescribed for one reason but not another.” The state further argued that the law doesn’t classify people based on sex but rather “creates two groups: minors seeking drugs for gender transition and minors seeking drugs for other medical purposes.” Like the federal government, the private parties represented by Strangio argue that the law “imposes differential treatment based on the sex an individual is assigned at birth.” In support of their position, they cite the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which said that an employer violates federal civil rights law when they fire someone for being gay or transgender. Notably, that 6-3 ruling was authored by Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, so those justices’ questions at the hearing will be among the important ones to watch for. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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