Washington (AP) Following a presidential election in which Donald Trump and his supporters pledged to repeal protections for transgender individuals, proponents of transgender rights are turning to the conservative-led Supreme Court.
The topic of gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents, which has been outlawed in Tennessee and 25 other Republican-led states, will be discussed by the justices on Wednesday.
The battle over whether or not transgender teenagers can obtain hormone therapies and puberty blockers is a part of a larger attempt to control transgender people’s lives, including what sports contests they can participate in and what restrooms they can use.
Trump denigrated and ridiculed transgender persons during his 2024 campaign, and he supported a nationwide ban on such care.
In its final days, the Biden administration will urge the judges to overturn the Tennessee ban as illegal sex discrimination and defend the constitutional rights of vulnerable Americans, joined by families of transgender teenagers.
In an interview, Chase Strangio, who represents families before the Supreme Court, stated that the stakes are high not only for transgender teenagers but also for the parents who are witnessing their children suffer and are merely attempting to do what is right for their children.The first openly transgender person to argue before the supreme court will be Strangio, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.
A Tennessee attorney will contend that the state has a duty to safeguard minors and that the life-altering gender-transition operations are dangerous and unproven.
During his first year, Trump appointed three judges who steered the court toward conservatism, including the 2022 vote to overturn the historic Roe v. Wade decision, which had upheld abortion rights for almost 50 years.
However, Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of Trump’s appointees, also wrote the 2020 opinion that shielded LGBTQ individuals from discrimination in the workplace under federal civil rights legislation.
That ruling is a point of contention for both the administration and transgender families.
The lawsuit, which is not anticipated to be decided until the spring, may be heard by the next administration after Trump assumes office on January 20, 2025.
According to the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, there are approximately 1.3 million adults and 300,000 adolescents in the United States who identify as transgender. The Williams Institute is a think tank that studies gender identity and sexual orientation populations to help shape public policy and legislation.
Similar to Tennessee’s ban, the majority of Republican-controlled states have enacted similar legislation, and despite judicial challenges, those laws are mostly in force. The nation’s highest court will examine the bans’ constitutionality for the first time in the Tennessee case.
Twenty-year-old transgender college student Sivan Kotler-Berkowitz of Massachusetts claimed that if he had been a few years younger and had lived in one of the states, his life would have been dramatically different.
In an interview, he claimed that these prohibitions are depriving people of the chance to thrive. Because we have had the support and understanding of our families as well as access to appropriate care, hundreds of transgender youngsters across are prospering just like me.
Families are now forced to choose between waiting until their children turn 18, going without, or traveling for continuing medical care due to the bans in Tennessee and other places.
The lawsuit will be just as significant as Roe v. Wade, according to Erin Friday, a leader of Our Duty, a global organization that advocates for the prohibitions on gender-affirming care for children. According to her, enforcing the Tennessee legislation would strengthen the arguments for the regulations limiting access to restrooms and sports.
Many youngsters who originally identify as transgender later change their minds, according to one of the arguments put up by supporters of the state laws. When Friday’s daughter revealed she was transgender at the age of 11, Friday blamed the child’s indoctrination at school. However, Friday stated that her daughter had a change of heart after undergoing mental health treatment. In a Supreme Court petition on Friday, the court stated that more children would suffer irreparable injury and live with profound regret if laws like Tennessee’s were overturned.
Although there is no evidence of regret for transitioning, patients should be informed of the possibility during psychiatric counseling, according to 2022 revisions to guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
According to certain medical professionals who treat transgender minors, the state shouldn’t stand in the way of professionals, their patients, and their parents. According to Dr. Susan Lacy of Memphis, Tennessee, who joined the families in suing the state, “I think it’s really frightening and dangerous to think that legislators could pass a law that basically judges or controls what people could do with a medication based on a diagnosis,” she said in an interview.
According to Michelle Quist Ryder, CEO of the American Psychological Foundation, the laws are detrimental to the mental and physical well-being of transgender individuals and those who support them if they remain in effect. Depression and suicidal thoughts have been connected to gender dysphoria, which is the uneasiness a person may have when their assigned sex and gender identity don’t match.
“Trans youth will look out and ask, ‘Who else is going to come after me?'” she asked, adding that the more we undermine the sense of safety in this community, the more they will feel threatened.
Some of the 83 briefs—an exceptionally high number—filed on both sides of the case contain well-known individuals. Along with over five dozen others, actors Elliot Page and Nicole Maines, as well as Sarah McBride of Delaware, who was elected to Congress in November as the first openly transgender person, have called on the court to overturn the Tennessee legislation.
135 athletes, coaches, administrators, and parents, including Olympic swimming gold medalists Donna de Varona and Summer Sanders and tennis star Martina Navratilova, ask the court to uphold the restriction on gender-affirming care for transgender youngsters.
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From Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Mulvihill reported. This story was written by Associated Press reporter Lindsay Whitehurst and AP Medical reporter Carla K. Johnson in Seattle.
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