On Wednesday I will present oral argument before the Supreme Court in United States v. Skrmetti, a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents.
I, along with my colleagues at the American Civil Liberties Union and other co-counsel, represent three transgender adolescents, their parents and a Tennessee doctor who is barred from treating her transgender patients under the age of 18 with the hormone therapy she is permitted to prescribe for purposes other than to treat gender dysphoria. In Tennessee, doctors can prescribe puberty-blocking medication and hormone therapy for many medical reasons. Under the Tennessee law that is now being challenged before the Supreme Court, they are barred from doing so to allow an adolescent to identify, live or appear in a way inconsistent with the person’s sex assigned at birth.
The question before the court is whether a law that prohibits such medical treatment is discriminatory under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Our position, and the position of the United States (at least until Jan. 20), is that it does.
My presence at the Supreme Court as a transgender lawyer will have been possible because I have had access to the very medical treatment at the center of the case. Though some doubt the lifesaving properties of this care, I know them personally. And so do my clients.
Though the question before the court is a relatively narrow one, the stakes are high, particularly as Donald Trump takes office in the wake of a presidential campaign in which transgender people and our health care played an outsize rhetorical role. If there is to be a judicial check on the incoming president’s efforts to federally ban health care for transgender minors and restrict it for transgender adults — as he has promised to do — this case provides a critical vehicle.
In some sense, I am speaking not only to the nine justices who will decide this case but also to a country confused, skeptical and unnecessarily fearful of trans health care.
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