The Supreme Court’s decision in *United States v. Skrmetti* upholding state bans on transgender healthcare for minors is a deeply troubling development, even beyond its predictable partisan split. Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion, while unsurprising in its outcome, is a masterclass in convoluted legal reasoning, twisting established precedents and drawing incoherent distinctions to reach a predetermined conclusion.
The Court’s decision was not only unnecessary but also avoided addressing the crucial threshold question of whether Tennessee’s law should even be subjected to heightened scrutiny. Justice Kagan’s dissenting opinion rightly points out that the Court could have applied existing law, sending the case back to lower courts for this heightened review. Instead, the majority opinion delved straight into the legality of the bans, offering a flimsy justification for sidestepping previous anti-discrimination rulings.
While this approach minimizes the immediate broader implications, it doesn’t erase the underlying concern. During oral arguments, justices floated the idea of granting broad government authority to discriminate based on sex in medical contexts. While Roberts’s opinion doesn’t fully embrace this sweeping change, its convoluted language leaves the door ajar for future, more extreme interpretations.
This decision further reveals the Republican majority’s impatience, prioritizing ideological outcomes over sound legal reasoning. The opinion’s incoherence makes predicting its broader implications difficult, but one thing is certain: this represents a historic setback for transgender Americans. Understanding the legal questions at the heart of the case sheds light on the opinion’s flaws.
The first question centered on whether Tennessee’s ban classifies patients based on their sex assigned at birth. The Court’s previous ruling in *United States v. Virginia* mandates heightened scrutiny for *all* gender-based classifications. Tennessee’s law, explicitly aimed at preventing young people from diverging from their assigned sex, clearly fits this criteria. The law’s stated purpose is to encourage minors to “appreciate their sex,” a blatant sex-based classification demanding heightened scrutiny.
However, Roberts argues the law only classifies based on age and medical use, ignoring the law’s core purpose. A law can, of course, have multiple aspects, and this one explicitly hinges on sex-based classification. This evasion of established legal precedent is alarming.
The second question concerned whether all laws discriminating against transgender individuals warrant heightened scrutiny. Roberts avoids this by claiming the law doesn’t classify based on transgender status, but rather on conditions like gender dysphoria, a distinction as illogical as saying Jim Crow laws discriminated based on skin color, not race. This relies on the outdated *Geduldig v. Aiello* precedent, ignoring subsequent rulings that prohibit evading discrimination laws by targeting traits closely associated with a specific identity.
While the Court’s failure to rule on whether laws classifying based on transgender status require heightened scrutiny is arguably a small mercy, it’s a pyrrhic victory. Amy Coney Barrett’s concurring opinion emphasizes the lack of heightened scrutiny for trans individuals, highlighting the precarious future of transgender rights. *Skrmetti* is a devastating blow to transgender people, particularly youth, twisting constitutional principles to uphold discriminatory laws and forcing many families to relocate to ensure their children receive appropriate medical care.
