WASHINGTON, D.C., June 18, 2025 – Today the Supreme Court issued a 6–3 ruling in U.S. v. Skrmetti, upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. This is the Court’s latest restriction on controlling people’s bodies and denying them access to the health care that they need and deserve. More than half the states have passed similar bans, creating a refugee status for transgender young people and their families across a wide swath of the country who want to respect and affirm their identities.
The Court found that the law was subject only to rational basis review, the lowest level of scrutiny, claiming that it does not target transgender people directly. This is despite the fact that only transgender people would experience the medical diagnoses that it targets while cisgender people would continue to have access to the same medications for other conditions. The majority ignores the conclusive amount of research showing the benefits trans kids experience from these affirming treatments while humoring unsound theories that other methods can support them. Justice Thomas, in his concurrence, even attacked the World Professional Association for Transgender Health directly, claiming it “bases its guidance on insufficient evidence and allows politics to influence its medical conclusions” — which is ironically exactly what the Court has done today.
Justice Sotomayor, writing for the three liberal justices, noted in her dissent that the majority “contorts logic and precedent” to arrive at the conclusion that this law does not discriminate on the basis of sex and transgender status and, in doing so, “abandons transgender children and their families to political whims.” She illustrates this by noting that if a law prohibited minors from attending any religious services inconsistent with their religion, “no one would seriously dispute that such a rule classifies on the basis of religion.” By circumventing the Equal Protection Clause in this way, the majority “invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight.”
Alliance for Justice President Rachel Rossi issued the following statement:
“The Supreme Court just declared that, in the United States, bigotry trumps freedom. Harmful laws like Tennessee’s accomplish nothing except to deny transgender young people the simple, safe, and proven health care that saves lives. We should all be alarmed at the notion that this Supreme Court is willing to deny us health care simply to cater to those who would rather legislate transgender people out of existence. Given the inexcusable suffering and death we’ve seen without access to abortion and how eager the Trump administration is to restrict access to vaccines and other care, this ruling is the latest reminder of just how far this Court is willing to go to restrict private and critical health care decisions. We now enter a terrifying new reality where medical expertise is irrelevant and our well-being is bound to the whims of extremist ideologues.”