Members of the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over a law in Tennessee which prohibits interventions purporting to alter the sex of children who claim to identify as transgender.
Tennessee lawmakers passed the legislation to protect minors from puberty blockers and surgeries that alter their sex characteristics, interventions which prompt critics of such procedures to note the irreversible harm they render and the biological impossibility of changing individual sex. Justices in the conservative majority of the Supreme Court likewise indicated skepticism toward the procedures as attorneys opposed the law.
Justice Samuel Alito asked questions of Chase Strangio, a self-described transgender attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union, forcing her to admit that there is no evidence that the procedures reduce suicide levels. Other studies in recent years have instead showed that adults who undergo transgender surgeries are still more likely to attempt suicide than other adults.
Members of the liberal minority on the Supreme Court were at the same time more likely to indicate sympathy with the plaintiffs in their arguments for transgender procedures on children.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who refused to define the term woman during her confirmation hearing, compared bans on such procedures to bans on interracial marriage. Justice Sonia Sotomayor responded to Tennessee Solicitor General Matthew Rice discussing the risks of the procedures by claiming that “every medical treatment has a risk, even taking aspirin.”
The arguments before the Supreme Court come after a new analysis from Do No Harm, an association of medical professionals combating leftist activism in healthcare, revealed that at least 5,700 minors have been subjected to transgender operations between 2019 and 2023.
Some twenty-three states have now passed prohibitions on transgender surgeries and hormones for children, while other states have increased legal protections for the practices.
The procedures tend to create other medical issues that substantially decrease life expectancy and result in patients becoming dependent on future treatments from the medical system.
