(Washington) The Supreme Court of the United States took up Monday for the first time the question of treatment for transgender minors, which deeply divides American society, by agreeing to examine the constitutionality of a law adopted by the Conservative Tennessee.
The Tennessee law, validated by a federal appeals court, prohibits minors who do not recognize their birth gender from access to puberty blockers, hormonal treatments and surgical procedures to change their sex.
The family of a minor from this state, supported by human rights organizations and the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden, appealed to the Supreme Court the constitutionality of this law, on the grounds of its discriminatory nature.
The Court granted this request and will therefore examine during its next session, between October 2024 and July 2025, whether this law violates a provision of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution on the “equal protection” of citizens since it deprives transgender people access to treatments authorized for others.
In her written arguments before the Court in February, Biden administration legal counsel Elizabeth Prelogar cited “the overwhelming medical consensus in favor of medical treatments” for transgender adolescents.
Tennessee, for its part, argues “potentially irreversible after-effects” of hormonal or surgical interventions in the face of an “explosion of gender dysphoria diagnoses”.
Gender dysphoria refers to the state of suffering experienced by children or adolescents when faced with the inadequacy between their gender identity and the sex assigned at birth.
In another procedure targeting a similar law in the state of Idaho (northwest), the Supreme Court in April authorized its provisional entry into force, until it rules on the merits.
More than twenty American states have adopted legislation to this effect.
Idaho law threatens criminal prosecution against health professionals who perform various treatments such as puberty blockers, hormones, or certain surgical procedures on minors.
Without ruling on the constitutionality of this law, the Supreme Court lifted the suspension, but authorized the plaintiffs to benefit from such treatment.